Maybe Clipper really does still live?

Many moons ago a friend suggested that the Clipper project had been cut short a little too neatly after it had been a little too successful, and that maybe, just maybe, it's development had been moved to somewhere like the Skunkworks.

...then I read about this and suddenly mayybe that friend was onto something. I mean, they're not going to get all that hardware up there by Shuttle, now are they?