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.

Comments

Reality Check for the Peaceniks

[Harmast]

But the plan also touches many raw nerves, most obviously among those who object to the militarisation of space

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

Better idea

[Nastard]

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!

Oh good, an X33-based space bomber, no worries

[dpilot]

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.)

Re:Arsenal ships ?

[cprael]

Quicky refresher on military technology, circa 1992.

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:

• The planned loadout for the arsenal ships constituted something like 35% of all available SLCMs at the time.
• To actually keep up with the rate of fire, SLCM production would have to be roughly quintupled.
• The things were such great high-value targets, with minimal defenses, that any idiot would go after them immediately.
• They weren't designed to fight a war, but rather beat on an already-down opponent. Kinda like WW2 monitors, they would only be useful in a very limited number of situations.
• Normal downtime rules meant that they'd really only be available about 25% of the time. In the end, the idea died when someone tried to actually get funding to build one.

Republicans, Treaties, and Silver Bullets

[TheBracket]

When I was studying as SMSU, under the auspices of Van Cleave (and before that under Colin Gray), a few things were very clear. The primary one is that Arms Control in general is viewed as a Bad Thing (TM). The reasoning is basically that it only works to calm things down when you don't need it, because countries that are becoming hostile to one another aren't going to adhere to treaties anyway - so you end up binding your own hands when you don't need to. The second reason is that Arms Control generally affects Western nations differently to other countries. For example, the ABM Treaty has a strict interpretation enforced when the US looks at it (based on interpretation of negotiating record, etc.), whereas the former Soviet Union has been caught violating it with radar in Siberia.

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.

Re:Only earth targets?

[Paintthemoon]

Now, the _real_ trick would be to convince the Pentagon that there is a threat to the US from Mars...