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X-33 Venture Star Reborn as Space Bomber
Julius Su writes: "The LA Times reports that the Pentagon is interested in developing a "space bomber" that could be used to drop bombs on any Earthly target within 90 minutes of takeoff -- from an altitude of 300,000 feet. At this height, bombs don't need explosives to function. Critics worry about the start of a new arms race in space. Not to worry, Pentagon officials say -- the plane would fly in a suborbital path and would only attack Earth targets. The plane itself would be adapted from the X-33 Venture Star, originally developed at the Skunk Works as a vertical-take-off glider-landing reusable space vehicle." NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
The Soviets did do alot of work on FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) in the 60s,
http://www.rocketry.com/mwade/lvs/r36o.htm
"The Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) requirement of 1961 called for a system to place a large nuclear warhead equipped with a deorbit rocket stage into a low earth orbit of 150 km altitude. The warhead could approach the United States from any direction, below missile tracking radar, so little warning was available. Not only could such a missile hit any point on earth, but the enemy would also be uncertain when it would be deorbited onto target. The main disadvantage was lower accuracy of the warhead in comparison to an ICBM. "
"Flight trials of the system were conducted 1965 to 1972. Since orbiting of nuclear weapons was a violation of international treaty, the Soviet Union conducted all tests on a 'fractional orbit' basis - i.e. the test warheads were deorbited after less than one orbit of the earth. The system was in service at 18 siloes at Baikonur from 1969 to 1983. "
I count 28 tests from 1961 through 1971.
So yes, the Soviets did orbit nuclear weapons. The US also worked on these projects, but I've got food poisoning and am not going to look through Encyclopedia Astronautica for a link, I though the US FOBS was based on the Titan II and the 9 MT warhead they carried.
There's alot on Soviet and US combat space craft there too, links at the bottom of the page.
http://www.rocketry.com/mwade/index.htm
Slashdot should have a "Horrific Pun" moderation setting, but I'm torn between it being a +1 or -1.
You mean Franklin Delano Rosenfeld wasted his entire first term before turning the counrty over to the Elders of Zion? Darn, another paranoid conspiracy theory shot all to pieces.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I have to wonder if these people ever paid attention.
Have they heard of Blue Gemini? Are they aware that half of Salyut series of Soviet space station were military? That both the US and Russian have mature anti-satillite technology (and probably the ESA and China as well)? That both the US and USSR had designs for orbital nuclear platforms? That the USSR's platforms re-entry vehicles may have been tesed (mixed reporting on that one still)?
Space is militarized and will continue to be. Why, because war is humanity's racial bad habit. I fail to understand why bombing someone with a suborbital bomber is somehow worse than doing it with a B-2, a B-1, an F-117, an F/A-18, or even a 155mm or 203mm artillery piece.
All will knock down your house and leave you dead.
Want to hate war, good for you...coming from a long line of soldiers I'm not a big fan either (we tend to die a lot)...but to decry this plan as militarizing space is to ignore current reality, history, and human nature.
Herb
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
Yea, but that would have to be the French space program, not ours...
I can just see a bunch of NASA engineers out at the skunk works with a big box of LEGOs and Erector sets gluing mockups on the X33/34 for a dog and pony show for some LeMay-esque general.
" Yes general, to convert the sub-orbital system to a fully orbit functional craft requires only a minor thrust conversion package, the Lets Enter Geostationary Orbit (LEGO), available for few more billion per system. To convert the gravity assisted kinetic into a more gerenalized hit to kill (HTK) system, referted to as KINETEX (Kill Interorbital NETwork, EXperimental) requires another small modification to the internal weapon system bays. And finally there is the Exogenous REntry Constructor and Terrestrial Orbital Respoder (ERECTOR) package to allow total defense against any terrestrial as well as extra-terrestrial threats.
All of the packages are available under a unifed options package, The Joint Unified Neo Kinetic, Yearly Allocated Resource for Defence Weapons- Aerospace Research-scientist Support ( JUNK YARD WARS).
We kindly thank the Group of Researchers for AVaracious Yearly TRAnsfering INcome (GRAVY TRAIN) for their kind support in funding this anaylis.
(Full disclosure.. I worked as a nuclear physicist and like the Xplanes.. The researchers just recognize that future funding is more likely to come out of DOD than NASA) anyway, writing this was fun.
Also, although it'd reach any point on Earth in 90 minutes, I suspect the time needed to actually prepare one for launch would be substantially more. The X-33 uses liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen so unlike an ICBM, it can't be kept on the pad, fueled up and ready to go at a moment's notice as the propellents would boil off.
I'm not knocking this. I think it'd be superb if the Pentagon foots the bill to get the X-33 flying, it's just I can see some serious flaws.
First off, a lot of people have asked: why is this worse than a cruise missile? A B2? etc.
Well, a conventional explosive won't do too much. You'll need a lot of them in order to really damage a country's infrastructure, and that takes a lot of time, effort and money (e.g. Gulf War, Bosnia to use US examples). So, you go to nukes. Problem is that there're long-lasting negative effects from nuking (radiation), not just to your target country, but to large portions of the surrounding geography (even the world, of you use enough).
When you're dropping a rock (or car, whatever) from orbit, you have nearly no radiation, and total devistation of the target. So, you can take out N. Korea without any more than kicking up a whole lot of dust at S. Korea. So... why not?! That's the key problem with this kind of weapon: it's a weapon of mass distruction, which cannot distinguish civilians from military targets, and there's very little to hold one back from being the first (an possibly last) to use it....
Second, there's a question of the continued military applications of space. Our population is getting uncontrolably large on this planet, and we may well *need* to start exploring the use of space for: mining, power generation, even manufacture in order to support our population. But, as long as the military presence in space stifles other forms of exploration (and don't kid yourself, right now, we squash any credible civilian attempt to gain a space-borne foot hold), we can't move forward.
Third, darn it, we gave our word (in the form of treaties) and if our word is this worthless, then I submit that we are too!
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Near-space altitude obviates the need for warhead
Hrm. Is that so? I mean, you can easily calculate the kinetic energy per Kg. What is the terminal velocity of a warhead shaped thingie? A google search for joule kilotonne gives 4200 GigaJoule per kilotonne. The maximum payload of the x33 is 25000 kg, so counting backwards, we see that the payload needs to reach ~ 18300 m/s just to get a kilotonne yeild (and that's for a 40th of a kilotonne, which isn't great). Furthermore, that is mach 61, which I suspect is beyond the terminal velocity of anything in freefall (ie, without incoming velocity).
However, if you want to knock out infrastructure without serious casualties, dropping 25000 unpiloted slugs might do the trick. or 50000 1/2 kilo ones that have explosives. Especially if you can drop them in piloted packages to disperse at lower altitudes. Terminal velocity is your friend, since it basically means you loose nothing by dispersing late (presumably the smaller slugs have higher terminal velocity than the delivery package).
So actually, I see this as a fairly humane rapid suppression device.
The US: Make it military, then we can hide how much it costs in the interest of "National Security".
Russia: We'll get dumb rich Americans to pay us to build it for joy rides. See here: Russia restarting Buran program for space tourism purposes.
Hmm, clever blokes those Russians, eh?
I suppose now we can blow up the Chinese embassy by mistake from outer space the next time we are bombing some obscure country into the stone age.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Here's a better idea: Since cows outnumber people in the US by something like 3:1 (I forget the actual number), why not just drop cows on the enemy? A penny from a tall building can leave a pretty big crater, so just imagine what would happen if you dropped a cow from 40,000 feet!
Not only would it be an effective weapon, it would confuse the hell out of any enemies we didn't kill. It would also be cheaper. McWarfare.
So write your congressman in support of highly combustable bovine munitions today!
This is a stupid idea -- not because there's anything wrong with using a SSTO device as a very high-speed bomber, but because there's absolutely no reason to use a manned platform for it. We can do everything that this can do with a semi-autonomous (or even fully autonomous) system. If there's no reason to use a manned platform for it, then there's no reason to build a reusable vehicle; the weight of the reentry equipment would be better used for payload. If there's no reason for that...then why not use ballistic missles for the same thing? They're cheap, easy to build, easy to conceal, and well understood.
And don't tell me about technology spin off. If that's what we want to do, then NASA needs to make that case itself, instead of hiding behind DOD's "national security" excuse. Military production is inefficient at the best of times, but undirected research without public review is a recipe for pure and unmitigated waste. The X-33 is still in a very pure research stage. The military won't do any better with it than NASA did, and will probably do much worse.
NASA knows that X-33 failed to meet any of its basic goals and they know that it won't meet any of them in the near term. Being good bureaucrats, they're trying to save the program. Instead of trying to justify the project to Congress any more, NASA's found some guy with scrambled eggs on his head and scrambled brains in his head who wants to get the military to underwrite the rest of his career. Typical conspiracy of crooks. What a crock.
I followed the X33 for years on the construction-floor web cam, and followed the discussion for years in the sci.space.* newsgroups. I realize the folks there are pessimists about anything but their own orbital access scheme, but there are a few objective considerations:
The X33 was a prototype vehicle, not meant to be manned. Nor did it have any payload capacity, to speak of. It's payload capacity pretty much was its avionics bay.
Then the composite LH2 tank failed its tests, and they went to a backup plan of Aluminum LH2 tanks, reducing the payload capacity further.
Besides, the X33 was a 1/3 scale test vehicle, and it was never certain exactly how to scale it up to the full-sized Venture Star. I guess perhaps you could make the X33 into an unmanned bomber, but given its miniscule payload capacity, isn't it closer to a mirv'ed ICBM, and don't we have those, already?
Then again, what's the point of an orbital bomber? A craft has to be designed for stealth, you can't fit it in, afterward. Besides, anything would be visible during boost phase, and then you've got a line to follow it, so there are no surprises. Plus even a guided bomb (as others mention) would take so LONG to arrive.
Isn't a cruise missile more cost-effective?
Sounds to me like project leaders grasping at any possible straw to keep their baby alive. (Actually, I approve of this one. I just hope the baby is born, and finds its way back into civilian space.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
...then so be it. I hear all the whining "Waa, waa, weapons buildup is horrible (except for the economy)" and I've stopped caring. If it's the Defense Department that wants to pay for my fiends at NASA, then fantastic. I mean, better they spend my tax dollars on space-based weapons than on more bullets or something else I don't care about.
Our space program came to a grinding halt when the Challenger exploded, and I think that's a terrible shame, and a disservice to the memory of those who died.
Exploring has always taken a high toll in lives and it is only our lately-super-sensitive society that holds us back in this new arena of space travel. Excuse my irritation, but *I* want to get into space and unless things progress a little more quickly, I'll have to bribe some third world government with promises of blow jobs to get into space. And I don't want that.
"...that could be used to drop bombs on any Earthly target within 90 minutes of takeoff."
Better enjoy that illegally-downloaded MP3 while you can.....coz you ain't got long.
The basic idea is pretty sound - a long chunk of iron/steel, with a guidance package in the nose, and basic aerodynamic surfaces for guidance. Shouldn't be too hard to build, and would be thoroughly nasty once they tough down.
- Washington Naval Treaty: Japan signs, then immediately starts building in violation of the treaty. After the initial term of the treaty ends, Japan declares its intent to withdraw from the treaty in the minimum allowable time, and commences construction as appropriate.
- Versailled Treaty: As part of the terms of the treaty, Germany is required to disarm in a number of areas, and is technologically restricted in a number of others (fighter aircraft, u-boats, other weapons development), and is not allowed to militarize the Ruhr, which is occupied by French troops. Germany responds by moving most weapons development work abroad - the Netherlands and the USSR are the two primary locations. The infamous 88mm Pak 18 was, for example, developed and tested by a design team in the Netherlands. The day after France pulls out of the Ruhr, Germany abrogates the relevent portions of the Versailles treaty, and moves their own army troops in.
- CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty. This treaty reduces conventional forces for both sides by significant amounts. One loophole exists for "maritime" support forces, while another exists as a geographic loophole - Russia is only included up to the Ural mountains. As soon as the treaty is signed, Russia (a) moves large amounts of treaty-prohibited armor into parking facilities to the west of the Ural mountains (ironically, since that equipment wasn't maintained, it's now a huge pile of rust), and (b) redesignates some 20% of their frontal aviation assets as "naval infantry" support assets. NATO pulls a few tricks in similar veins.
The 1967 treaty will be observed as long as the signatories who matter want it to be observed. Quite frankly, however, I expect that most of those treaties will either die, or be ignored, in the next 10-15 years. PD logic is pretty clear that in a multi-power situation, the treaty is the first thing to go.Figure it out, guys - we're gearing up for a war with China, about 20 years down the road. Just like we started gearing up for a war with Japan, and Germany, in the 1920s.
One of the interesting issues exposed by the Gulf War was that, given the then-current state of the art, a given firing ship could actually control a lot more firing tubes than were mounted on it. For example, an Aegis cruiser could comfortably target/control several hundred SLCMs, but only had about 70 tubes, and usually kept >2/3 of those filled with SAMs for self defense. Since the control electronics were the expensive part of the equation, and since a properly equiped ship could easily control other ships' missiles, some blithering idiot put these facts together and came up with the arsenal ship.
The basic idea was to have a (large) ship, built to civilian standards (not military/blast/etc. resistant), with a small crew (40ish, as I recall), and only minimal self-defense capability. The ship's primary purpose was to be a great, big, floating VLS platform - the design I saw had over 200 VLS launch tubes, which were to be filled with cruise missiles, with a few SAMs thrown in for use by the accompanying warships if needed. No control electronics, except those needed to permit another ship to control launches, would be included, however. Plans were to build 2 of them - one for the Atlantic fleet, one for the Pacific fleet.
The idea ran into several practical problems:
Might I suggest grand pianos and anvils as "payloads" for this scheme?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
It's a great idea (and ameliorates the excess cow problem as well). Unfortunately, in some studies we performed for BARPA (Bovine Advanced Research Projects Agency) a while back we encountered some serious technical problems:
That said, of course we recommended further study.
Curtains for windows?
NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
So _that's_ why there were twin chainguns mounted on the asteroid rovers in Armageddon. I couldn't for the life of me figure that one out- until now.
Thank god, for a moment I thought we might start killing other species on other planets instead of just slowly exterminating mankind.
One of the primary targets amongst my right-wing colleagues was the Outer Space Treaty. In particular, they are upset by the "no weapons in space" rule (itself subject to some interpretation as to what it actually means), the "celestial bodies aren't owned by nations" rule, and the "free passage in space over any nation" rule. Finding a way to quietly erode this treaty would make them very happy, because the best way to get rid of a treaty is to quietly let it slip into obsolescence. That way you avoid all of the shouting that accompanies the current missile defense row, for example. The ASAT prorgam, Space Based Laser program, Brilliant Pebbles, and similar have already walked this particular path
The Pentagon has long talked about a Space Plane project. As it is, this is a bad program. The X-33 has technical issues, but I'm sure they will be worked out. On the other hand, it's heavy, relatively fuel-inefficient (for example, the failure of honeycomb design fuel tanks - and replacement with conventional ones - has resulted in significant weight gain/total fuel loss). It also wastes a HUGE amount of infrastucture on carrying a human crew - the same problem exhibited in other Air Force projects. Make something like this unmanned and you can halve the weight, greatly reduce development costs, and make running costs significantly lower - not to mention you don't have to worry so much about pilot safety.
This program satisfies several of these objectives. It further militarises space, gives the Pentagon a shiny new weapon, and gives Frank Gaffney reason to send more faxes to anyone and everyone. In reality, it will be like the B2; expensive, capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot). It's unlikely that very many will be built, and the X33 program already has significant cost overruns. Just like the B2, it will be dubbed as "equivalent to X conventional planes" (with X being a large number) despite the fact that you still need the other X-1 planes for more general purpose missions. Rumsfield is proving to be like Weinberger; willing to spend big bucks on technology that the services want without trying to fit it into any sort of grand strategy. His obsession with China can't be helping, either. Expect several more "silver bullet" military solutions of this type - arsenal ships spring to mind.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
:), so the researchers involved went to the military.
That's not actually that far off the mark.
To get funding for most projects, you need to demonstrate that there will be a return on investment, or, if you can't do that, develop it for military applications.
This is the reason the 'Net was developed by ARPA. There was no concieveable way to make money out of it (there still isn't
Shame that's how society works... either it makes money, or it makes war.
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
And a bomber which attacks from space demands a space-based defense against the bomber, just as conventional bombers are attacked by fighter/interceptors aircraft. And once missiles/satellites/planes are developed that can attack the space bomber, there needs to be some way of escroting and defending the bomber in space. Space based missile. Ground to space weapons. Air to space weapons. Suborbital fighters. And so on ad infinitum. Once we put weapons in space, more weapons will follow, even if they're just suborbital.
That said, the idea of kinetic bombs is sort of cool, just because they give you enormous penetrating power without using a nuke.
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