Slashdot Mirror
X-37 Flies but Runs Off Runway
mknewman writes "The X-37 drop test was completed today with a lift by White Knight. It had a successful flight but it ran off the end of the runway."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
This is one of the worst submissions I've ever read.
It took off, it didn't explode ... two out of three aint bad, right?
I hadn't heard about this new project till I read the article. It's neat that Spaceship One's "White Knight" is being used to haul a DARPA-sponsored project into the Ether! This truly heralds a new age of independent aeronautics.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
The author was insuccessful in spelling "successful."
wouldn't bouncing count?
rewriting history since 2109
Trust me. They don't bounce.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I don't mean to be facetious, or a troll, but look at this statement: The X-37 was carried up from the Mojave Airport by Scaled Composites' White Knight airplane, the same mothership that bore SpaceShipOne into the sky for its historic private-sector space launches. That's been done several times before. But until today, either unacceptable weather or electronic glitches had stymied the maiden drop test -- and the X-37 had to stay hooked to the White Knight. Not only has it been done before, it has been done with obstacles (i.e. bad weather). AND the plane had to be supported the whole time. AND it's Friday the night, why the hell am I debating article merit on Slashdot.
Obviously the runway wasn't long enough.
*sigh* You poor, poor, uneducated man. Don't you know that all you have to do to fly is to throw yourself at the ground and miss?
Shutup.
"Brakes? We don't need no stinkin' brakes!"
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
I expect that my next flight won't be a 'successful flight'.
That's not flying, that's orbiting. Otherwise you don't miss, you hit.
We are the 198 proof..
it's like they're not even trying.
Our president, Dr. Blofeld, has already been working on this for a long time now.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
i mean come on worse things have been marketed and sold to us :D
I Predict A Riot
But if you miss, you don't hit.
Ow, my head hurts.
Karnal
That's not flying, that's orbiting.
/'flü/; flown /'flOn/; flying
Then why do we call it "spaceflight"?
According to Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 1fly
Pronunciation: 'flI
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): flew
Etymology: Middle English flien, from Old English flEogan; akin to Old High German fliogan to fly and probably Old English flOwan to flow
intransitive senses
1 a : to move in or pass through the air with wings b : to move through the air or before the wind or through outer space c : to float, wave, or soar in the air
2 a : to take flight : FLEE b : to fade and disappear : VANISH
3 a : to move, pass, or spread quickly b : to be moved with sudden extreme emotion c : to seem to pass quickly
4 : to become expended or dissipated rapidly
5 : to operate or travel in an airplane or spacecraft
6 : to work successfully : win popular acceptance
transitive senses
"USA will likely use this project for warfare and opression." You're probably right about that. From the article:
:)
DARPA picked it up in 2004 for its potential military applications. As far back as 2001, NBC News producer Robert Windrem reported that the craft could be adapted to serve as a "space bomber."
Considering they are thinking about adapting it into a space bomber, I think we can safely say that it will be used for "warfare"
This is not a sig. This is a llama-duck. Quack.
After all, the X37 was built by Boing . . . I mean Boeing.
you can walk away from is a good landing
antipaucity
When they set it free, they said "Fly! Fly!".
It didn't want to stop flying.
Since the flight took place at Edwards AFB where the laid runways are several miles long and the rest of the desert is smooth and flat for miles around, either running out of runway was a non-event, or else it has a landing run of a hundred miles or more... which might need some work to fix. Like fitting brakes.
That won't air until the 15th of April I believe. Maybe someone leaked the first ep (again), but I haven't heard about it.
Oh my god! They're going to bomb space!
They must think Osama is hiding on Hubble.
Both companies make civilian aircraft and rockets, and both do defense contracting.
Sure, and both have vowels in their corporate name, and both are run by men who wear pants to work and not togas. But on what many see as the key point of whether a company is willing to try radically new and different ways of getting into space, ways independent of the heavy hand of NASA bureaucratic design requirements -- and this is the "independent" I suspect the OP meant -- they're as different as chalk and cheese.
Boeing, like all aerospace majors, has tended to be very cautious about space vehicle design, perhaps in part simply because the cost-plus nature of major NASA and DoD contracts has meant there's less incentive to innovate. Why try some weird new design that may fail if the same old boring design, just multiplied by sixty, will work fine? So what if costs $bazillions? Your profit margin is guaranteed no matter how bloated the budget gets. And that does not even get into micromanagement by Congress, changing the mission requirements every 9 months at random, and institutional conservatism in NASA/DoD.
What many people hope is that a small company that is independent of this process, in the sense that they don't have any long history with the Feds, or gigantic conventional-warfare contracts to preserve, can be more innovative, and break the apparent barrier to lowering access to space costs that seems to have solidified in the past 20 years. It seems to these people incredible that it costs no less (or at least not much less) to put x pounds in orbit in 2006 than it did in 1969. They suggest it arises from fossilization in the big aerospace industry, fused with too-close a relationship to NASA/DoD, who are themselves paralyzed by the fickleness of Congress' support and the lack of any clear vision from the President.
Whether this is a true diagnosis of the situation remains to be seen, and people like Scaled, SpaceX, X-Cor, Virgin Galactic, et cetera will prove it one way or the other fairly soon.
"It had a successful flight but it ran off the end of the runway."
These guys need the White House spin doctors to make this look good...
"The test was successful because it ran off the end of the runway, after all, isn't "run" the operative word here?"
The H2G2 reference there went right over your head.
"USA fears Chinese millitary so it tries to develop weapons that Chinese army cannot shoot down or destroy"
Personally, if I were China, I'd spend less time worrying about Buck Rogers and more time worrying about the Seventh Fleet. You know, something far more terrestrial, closer to home, and something the Chinese military really can't do much about. But that's just me.
For those who prefer to get their news from industry-specific sources rather than general media, or for those who are boycotting the Microsoft-owned MSNBC, this space.com article might help.
r op.html
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060407_x37_d
Dropping bombs from earth orbit, that will be fun!
The United States fears the Chinese military? Er...why? Because they'll all throw themselves in front of the M1A1s so that sooner or later the tracks will start to slip in all that blood?
Dude, you should not post under the influence of powerful hallucinogens.
Lynyrd Skynyrd (or what's left of them).
A couple of well placed nukes would finish the 7th fleet. Really, you should worry more about China's economy eating the US rather than their military.
I'm glad that a smart organization liked Scaled is helping defend my country.
You must be young, or simple-minded.
Sure they're helping to "defend [your] country".
They're also helping to expand the reach of the greatest military machine on the planet, and they're strengthening the might of a fundamentalist religious power, and through both of those, they're part of the industriopolitical complex that spreads American culural and commercial imperialism to places where the locals certainly don't want it.
No doubt you prefer your own simpler worldview, but that just makes you part of the global problem.
I'm not surprised that Scaled takes military contracts, they need the money and even more importantly, the contacts that it provides. But don't bother trying to put a sweet patriotic (aka. nationalistic) gloss on it, it's false.
Bullshit! The Seventh Fleet employs anti-nucular force fields on all their ships.
It had a successful flight but it ran off the end of the runway.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Just make the runway longer.
a) China has a "no first use" policy with nuclear weapons
b) China would risk being internationally isolated if it used nuclear weapons, something that would be a very bad thing as they can't feed their huge population without importing food, (China is roughly the same size as the continental U.S. with 5 times the population and 5% less areable land) not to mention that it would completely wreck their economy
c) It would be extremely difficult to deliver a nuclear weapon to a US carrier battle group. Short-range balistic missiles aren't accurate enough to get close enough to the battle group, and assuming that you could even get close enough to the CBG to deliver a nuclear-tipped anti-ship missile like Sunburn, you would have Aegis/ESSM to contend with.
d) Nobody wants to fight a nuclear war.
"A couple of well placed nukes would finish the 7th fleet."
Including the submarines? A single Ohio class carries 24 SLBMs, and any nuclear attack by China would result in a nuclear response from the United States, which China would assuredly loose (China's nuclear arsenal is nowhere near parity with the United States).
China's nuclear arsenal is about as much a meaningful threat to the US as space-based weapons are a meaningful threat to China. Again, it would make more sense for China to get back down to earth and modernize and expand the PLA Navy.
Apparantly the X-37 wasn't properly distracted at the critical moment. Either that, or one of the project's critics jumped out and said "You can't possibly be flying!", at which point, it became true. Yes, yes, I know the issue wasn't exactly with the flight, but with the landing. However, landing is arguably part of flight, and still needs control...
Hey, thanks for the insider's perspective. It was very interesting reading. One of the reasons I enjoy /. at random moments.
As a taxpayer and space enthusiast from the Apollo days, I'm not that unhappy with government and NASA. I figure they do pretty much as best as they can, given what Congress and by extension we the people tell 'em to do.
Now I'm older, and have experienced more government for myself, I think maybe it just has to go into private hands. You need someone like Musk or Branson at the top, someone with a driving passion and vision, to keep things moving and organized, and to encourage appropriate risks. Some of those guys will crash and burn, but some will succeed, and then we all win. I hope it works out, I really do. I always thought I'd maybe get a chance to take a trip to the Moon -- it seemed a cinch when I was 10 and watching Apollo 17 lift off. Now....well, maybe my son will get to go. I'd like that.
i find your faith in the american military quite amusing, especially against a nation with more people in the army than usa's population or some crazy shit i heard from a person that knows a person
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
There really isn't any answer to your post. You've said it all. Perhaps the US might give away such equipment ; they would thus render the nuclear bomb obsolete and world peace closer. Perhaps you should stop watching "Star Trek". Perhaps you should get out more.
I just don't know.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Perhaps the US might give away such equipment ; they would thus render the nuclear bomb obsolete and world peace closer. Perhaps you should stop watching "Star Trek". Perhaps you should get out more.
Perhaps you might have been more convincing if you had avoided the word "perhaps" and had picked a more obscure sci-fi reference; the correct one in this case would have been "Gundam Seed" and its "neutron jammers". Perhaps you should watch more television.
"Perhaps" was as far as I wanted to go - my feeling is that limits are required if you're dealing with other people's ideas. Didn't (and don't) want to disagree with anybody - just express my thought - if possible quietly.
Since this is Slashdot however, we do have the "because you can" syndrome. So, "because I can", I'll come down with my firm opinion about something - no perhaps.
But there, of course, you have but my opinion.As for your more obscure sci-fi reference, I have a question. Is this security through obscurity ? Don't know the reference, sorry. My daughter went to a "jammy party" not long ago. Is this what you're talking about ? She told me that they watched sci-fi films, but it was more a question of "proton jammers" if I have understood correctly. Don't know. Don't really see what this has to do with the Seventh Fleet. Unless, of course, they're sailing around the Pacific in their pyjamas ? This is "perhaps" a possibility - but I don't think we should consider it (if we can avoid it, that is).
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
I think you'll find China is something the Seventh Fleet can't do much about, not the other way round :)
. . . so it tries to develop weapons that Chinese army cannot shoot down or destroy.
1) Do you think thay should design it so it's easily shot down?
2) In order to shoot it down, I guess you're going to have to find the problem in the armor.
Why would we care what's going on in mainland China? Without an effective counter to the US Navy, China can't realisticly threaten anything that would involve crossing water. The closest thing we have to an ally that shares a land border with China is India, and they have their own nuclear weapons. Forget Japan, PRC can't even stage an amphibious invasion of Taiwan if we were to decide to intervene.
Control of the Pacific Ocean means it would be far more likely for the US to invade PRC, not the other way around.
So you're saying China couldn't take out the seventh fleet? :)