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Two-Stage-to-Orbit Spaceplane Program Shelved
MadMorf writes "According to this article in Aviation Week, for nearly twenty years the USAF and "a team of aerospace contractors" has designed, built and tested a two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, which could be used for "reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery". Now this highly classified project may have been shelved for budgetary reasons."
sure it has. ;-) Probably just means it went operational.
So, now the program that "Doesn't exist" doesn't exist any more.
There should be a moderation category "Dumbest Comment EVER"
Slashdot reports this spaceplane being shelved as a certain fact. Even the article can't report it as certain. It's mostly conjecture and hearsay at this point.
When did slashdot turn into the Weekly World News? First it was political conspiracy theories, not this. It's getting ridiculous.
Did it really get shelved?
[conspiracy theory]
Supposedly we have an uber top secret project has been ongoing for 16 years. We have a group that has been probing into it for the full time. Maybe the group got close and the gov't decided to release info that it has been "shelved". The group redeems itself by posting the information and stops following the secret program. The gov't smiles and continues without watchful eyes.
[/conspiracy theory]
Maybe?
I'll bet that if they have retired this, they've determined that the can do the same with unmanned drones, or a smaller unmanned satelite system that's launched as one piece package.
My money is on the drones, however. Some of the newer models can orbit at close to 100k feet for long periods of time, and are so small hard to spot that they might as well be satellites. Also, if they've been successful enough with hiding the sats that are launched, as in last month's Wired article (discussed here on slashdot) then maybe they don't need as much quick launch capability.
This is a shame. I remember talk of this when I was in aerospace in the late 90s. I am of the opinion that most of the progress to be made on this type of thing is going to be done in the private sector and therefore the technology will be available to our enemies as well.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
I *want* to believe, but I doubt seriously if we have achieved this just yet. It would take a major breakthrough in fuel technology and/or hypersonic flight to make it from 100,000 ft. to 300 miles, even starting at mach 3. A craft the size of this hypothetical spaceplane would need a huge amount of fuel for that, not to mention heavy heat shielding a la the STS. I'm betting the NRO has found much cheaper methods of quietly getting satellites into unannounced orbits.
The USAF DynaSoar concept was considered and canned by 1963. So what else is new?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The fatal flaw in your argument is that any vehicle designed to put anything into space is capable of deploying weapons there.
Could you please name a single "drone" with a 100k ft. cruising altitude? Or to be more blunt, did you just make that up? I've researched UAV technology pretty extensively and haven't heard of any that fly that high. NASA/Scaled's Proteus and the RQ-4 Global Hawk have only reached about 65k, while the SR-71. I believe the D-21 could reach 100k from its launch platform (SR-71 at 75k), but that died out in the 1960s.
How arrogant, to think that 'democracy' and 'capitalism' (american style of course) once adopted by those savage backward countries, will lead to peace on earth. Also it is the height of huburis to think that these are the values and systems that are intrinsically better than all others that have ever been or ever will be.
>It seems infinitely sad to me that the primary motivation
>for most technological advance in the world is to come up
>with a better means of killing others.
I'm sure I'll burn some karma on this, but I would beg to differ.
There is an interesting premise to Larry Niven's sci fi writing about the Kzin war - the Kzin telepaths reported to their masters that the humans had no military weaponry, and were sure to be an easy conquest. Yet when they first attacked, humanity threw them back in short order, because the civilian technology we DID have was so powerful it cut thru their military systems like butter.
http://www.larryniven.org/kzin/empire.htm
Hmmm.
I see things a little differently, however. I work for the US military as a civilian, directly involved in the procurement of weapons of war. Anyone in our organization will immediately tell you that the goal is not to wage war, but to avoid it. Ronald Reagan knew this when he emphasized his "peace thru superior firepower" mantra. If we allow ourselves to become weaker than our foes, we will find war waged upon us, simply because it's possible. Granted, the only way to stay ahead is to work hard at it, and stay atop the technological king-of-the-hill game. To many (and apparently to this person) it looks as if we want the weapons so we can use them - but I assure you that the vast majority of soldiers, airmen and marines in this country want nothing to do with going to war. I have great respect for the armed services in America, because they are willing to put themselves in death's way to free others. But nobody that I've ever talked with had any interest in conquering another county for the sake of expanding our territory, or taking something that was not already ours.
In the end, I find it fortunate that our military research ends up providing such dramatic benefits for the civilian world.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
In recent years, Aviation Week has become somewhat more conservative about its coverage -- it's a little disappointing in some ways, as now they are often the last place to publish something -- but they are very rarely mistaken about a scoop like this.
They often publish photographs of planes, too, and leave the interpretation up to the reader. For example, they published the first photos of Rutan's White Knight, the carrier for SpaceshipOne. The White Knight/SpaceshipOne system flies a profile very similar to the one described by this current article, although with much lower performance.
Anyway, AvWeek published the White Knight photos with no description of the plane's mission, but any informed reader would immediately recognize it as a spaceplane first stage. Once Rutan announced the program, they covered it completely, but until they knew for sure they didn't say anything. For them to describe this Blackstar system in this explicit detail, I am certain that all their ducks are in a row -- and barcoded.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
How arrogant, to think that 'democracy' and 'capitalism' (american style of course) once adopted by those savage backward countries
'American style' is your embellishment, not my words. The need for democracy and capitalism is not so much derived form hubris as practical observation. What else to you suggest? Islamic faciscm? Stalinism? Maoist dictatorship?
an ill wind that blows no good
it probably couldn't carry enough payload for shuttle-style missions.
There's some pretty good coverage of the supposed Blackstar spaceplane over on Clark Lindsey's RLV News. According to the latest post, the existence of the project as previously described is looking rather dubious. Here's what Lindsey wrote:
Despite the many details provided by AvWeek about the purported Blackstar program, the existence of an "operational" TSTO reusable system seems wildly inconsistent with what has been happening with all the rest of the government space programs since the early 1990s and with what they have planned for the next couple of decades.
- As a reader already commented, NASA's whole approach to space transport is based on the claim that fully reusable space vehicles are not feasible with current technologies.
- DARPA has had programs like Falcon and RASCAL (canceled due to cost overruns) that are intended to provide "responsive space" capability. For the next 5-10 years, this simply means launching microsats on short notice. Why not just use Blackstar or build on its capabilities?
- Why would a system like the Blackstar be "shelved" when it is so far beyond what anyone else is flying and beyond what the rest of the government claims is even feasible?
- The magazine article speculates that the program was run directly or indirectly by an intelligence agency and they managed to kept it secret from even "top military space commanders". So how did they manage to fly this thing to orbit and not have it show up on the military's space tracking system?
- In a government where secrets seem to stay secret only until more than one person knows about them, I find it extremely hard to believe a huge program like this could be kept under wraps for over 10 years. And not just from the public but from most of the military and NASA.
If it was the beginning of April, I would take this whole thing to be a big leg-puller.
If we were still in the 1980s, I would assume AvWeek had been led astray by a disinformation campaign aimed at the Soviets. But the Soviets are gone so I'm not sure why anyone in the Pentagon or the Intelligence agencies would bother to run an elaborate spaceplane ruse other than perhaps to get back at AvWeek for breaking so many stories about secret programs over the past several decades...
A design study program and some prototype tests, maybe, but a secret operational orbital system borders on sci-fi. I like sci-fi and I hope this story is true but I'll wait for independent confirmation before I'll buy it.
Coincidentally, this news about the USAF's secret vehicle comes out on the same day as news that SpaceX has spent some of their money during the past few years secretly developing the first private manned orbital spacecraft. There's coverage on both SpaceRef and Space.com. The capsule will be reusable and is targetted at NASA's recently-announced COTS program for commercial deliveries of crew and cargo to the International Space Station. It's also likely that they'll be using the capsule to compete for Bigelow Aerospace's prize for a privately-built manned vehicle capable of docking with their private space station modules.
A quote from the Space.com article:
Musk said he thinks Dragon can be ready to enter service in 2009 - a full year before the shuttle is expected to conduct its last flight.
"I feel very confident about being able to offer NASA an ISS-servicing capability by 2009 and am prepared to back that up with my own funding," Musk said.
Dragon's initial test flights would be conducted from SpaceX's island launch facility in the Kwajalein Atoll, Musk said, with operational flights to be conducted from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Musk said SpaceX proposed several different configurations of Dragon in order to meet NASA's needs to deliver both pressurized and unpressurized cargo loads to the station and bring some materials back. He also proposed a crewed version capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to and from the station.
From the SpaceRef article:
Visitors to SpaceX's El Segundo facility over the past several years have noticed an area which is roped off - one they cannot get close to - with some large hardware covered up. Underneath those covers are a variety of Dragon protoypes and developmental items produced over the past several years.
Initial designs for Dragon were somewhat similar to a blunt nose version of the DC-X - complete with landing legs. Driven by additional thinking - and the emerging demands of a cargo and human transport business for the ISS - the design of Dragon has been modified and the crew capsule portion of the spacecraft now sports a more conventional blunt conical, capsule-like design with a 15-degree slope angle.
Lots of complaints in this thread about this article. Calling Slashdot the Weekly World News ect. Yet in the "Games: Gold Buying - Time Saver or Cheating?", people are taking it as seriously as possible. And let's not forget the "George Lucas Predicts Death of Big Budget Movies". Honestly... this is probably the best news story of the day. Sad.