>>12682828space planes been flying since the late 80s. I recall some stories about sonic booms shaking the LA basin on the regular about once a month every Tuesday about 3 am. This went on for a while and there were some stories in the media, like this one -
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-28-me-1342-story.htmlThen I think about 1992 or 1993 there was another story, cant find it. It was another CalTech seismologist who studied the seismographs of the sonic booms and could tell based on the location and timing the craft was coming in from high altitude steep decent headed to Area 51. The next day there was a follow up story that the Air Force asked CalTech to shut up about it and the sonic booms stopped. When the space shuttle burned up on rentry it followed a similar pattern/path when it landed at Edward, which is not too far from Area 51.