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Robot Spaceplane To Launch In 2008
FleaPlus writes "The US Air Force has announced that it is developing an unmanned reusable spaceplane, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The first launch is in 2008 on an Atlas V rocket. The X-37B will be one-fourth the size of the Space Shuttle and serve as a testbed for technologies for future reusable spacecraft. Its predecessor, the X-37, was drop-tested from the Scaled Composites White Knight mothership earlier this year."
Given that the U.S. government and military has made it obvious that it plans to dominate space I would guess this project has far more ambitious intents than simple orbital research. A small unmanned shuttle would provide the perfect capabilities for detection, destruction, and possibly even retrieval of "enemy" satellites. Add some radar absorbing materials/techniques to the X-37B mini shuttle and you have the perfect space based weapon.
A few of these shuttles in orbit at any one time could provide the ability to quickly take out other countries space capabilities without being as obvious as using a ground based laser or missile. Plus it would be far more accurate.
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Question: I am not a rocket scientist....
but wouldn't it be easier to just shoot a missile at whatever you don't like, rather than using space-fighter planes?
The whole space-fighter/missile scenario would seem to apply here- a missile requires a quarter the fuel and no real capacity for reuse while being able to carry more boom per rocket.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
"If successful, the plane would be the first spacecraft since the shuttle that would be capable of returning experiments back to Earth for analysis." Buran could do this - they just couldn't afford to fly the thing. Not that I'm suggesting we use Buran, btw... it's been sitting outside for a while.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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It's really just a cover for the coming invasion... They want Jack O'neil and Sam Carter up there to save us all!
/tinfoilhat
I ate your fish.
Oi you,
put that razor away.
On the other hand, we don't know what to call it other than "Buran" because the Soviet Space Transportation System (SSTS?) was never given a proper name other than letting people call it Buran.
By the way, does anyone know what kind of reentry vehicle -- lifting body, straight wing, delta wing -- this thing is?
The Russian and U.S. "capsules" were blunt body reentry vehicles -- some were ballistic, others used an offset CG for a small amount of hypersonic lift to mitigate the G-load and thermal load of reentry. Apollo along with the Russian Zond used offset CG to good effect for reentry from lunar distance. All landed mainly by parachute with either crushable couch struts to mitigate a land impact (Apollo, if they had to go down on land) or braking rockets -- the Russians may have crumped a Soyuz with a landing rocket failure, resulting in broken teeth.
The Shuttle famously uses a delta wing that produces a large amount of lift everywhere from hypersonic reentry down to the subsonic landing speed, and this famously drove up the cost and weight. Max Faget had a straight-wing Shuttle proposal that was equally famously rejected, both on the idea that straight-wing craft have nasty hypersonic handling (think Yeager and his tumble in the X1A, his tumble in the NF104, and Mike Adam's accident in the X15) along with the Air Force wanting the Shuttle to have more hypersonic cross range. But Faget's explanation of the thing is that the straight wing vehicle pancaked in -- it didn't really fly on those wings in hypersonic reentry -- and the straight wing Shuttle was like a cookie cutter applied to an Apollo heat shield, and the control of blunt body reentry with offset CG for some small amount of lift was well tested. But the Faget Shuttle would have to do some kind of Alley Oop maneuver at subsonic speed to transition from a full stall pancake attitude to proper flight on those straight wings, and there was some concern about doing that stall recovery safely.
Then there was the DC-X, the closest thing to a Buck Rogers spaceship from the 1930's comic books, which was to reenter as a blunt body (don't remember if it was nose first or tail first) but land on its tail using rocket thrust. Of course the DC-X on landing is this big mainly empty fuel tank so it is not going that fast before the rockets cut in for landing, but if the rockets fail, you are going to crump that thing.
Perhaps the only new thing under the sun for reentry (although not an orbital reentry) was the Rutans' "shuttle cock" folding tail where they reentered with a stable, high drag configuration and then straightened the tail for atmospheric flight and landing.
NASA wants to go back to the Apollo style reentry and landing but probably on land using parachutes and landing rockets like Soyuz and the Chinese spacecraft. You save big time on weight and there are safety advantages in terms of heat tile damage, but this low-control landing has problems of its own. Do you suppose NASA could wait awhile on the outcome of this Air Force project to see how it turns out?
But will it run linux?
What is...?
The Russians have been sending unmanned supply ships for years. The upgrade here is that the craft is reusable.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
An orbiting craft can loiter.
An orbiting craft can carry a veriety of ordnance to engage multiple and different types of targets.
An orbiting craft can position and reposition itself for surveillance missions.
An orbiting craft can stalk targets.
An orbiting craft can interdict enemy satellite launches and kill ballistic and cruise missiles.
Multiple stealthy orbiting craft can cluster over an enemy, then strike or wait as required.
24/7 presence over the battlefield can be a reality.
CONUS basing of such swift machines can reduce the need for deployments.
Killer drones are already controlled from CONUS, and this is their natural successor due to the absolute requirement to take the "high ground".
Beautiful idea really.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Jack O'Neill is a General now, I really doubt he'll be up there saving us all. Cameron Mitchell is much more likely. But if there's an Ori invasion, we can have all the fighters in the world up there and the toilet's beams will pound right through them...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Do you have any idea the wide variety of orbits used by satellites?
Do you have any idea the fuel costs it would take such an "interceptor" shuttle to move amongst these orbits?
A missile can do it simply, cheaply, and now. Occam's razor suggests they wouldn't build such a complicated ship for such a simple mission, and that your conspiracy theory is unfounded.
While that may be true, a missile doesn't really have the capacity to retrieve the target for analysis, or do "in flight" refuelling (spy and weapon satellites have thrusters for station keeping and reorientation tasks).
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The crew compartment was finished, its just that the test regimine called for an unmanned flight first. At least one cosmonaut volunteered to take the chance and go up in it on that first flight, but was swatted down by management.
Its a shame that it was never used; its one flight was a complete success before the program was put on hold due to a financial crisis in the Soviet Union (partially due to the tremendous cost overruns of the Buran/Energia program itself). If one compares the US and Soviet shuttles (not Russian, they never flew it), the Buran was technically superior in terms of launch costs and capability. The only part of it used was the strap-on boosters; they are still today as stand-alone rockets.
science is a religion
A robot spaceplane? OK...but we're not gonna scare the enemy unless it's a robot that turns into a spaceplane!
NASDA, the Japanese space agency that has morphed into JAXA, successfully tested a protoype. The program has been canceled due to lack of funding. JAXA intends to use the experimental data and the design schematics for this prototype to develop a manned space plane.
Did the United Force Air Force somehow "borrow" the Japanese experimental data and design schematics to develop the American version of an unmanned space plane?
Well I, for one, welcome our new high-flying drone overlords!
From everything I've read about the Space Shuttle design process, a major goal in making it reusable was to reduce the cost of getting into space. However, several competing interests within the government saddled NASA with conflicting demands. Attempting to satisfy everyone with one big multi-use tool made the whole system much more expensive to operate and maintain. It also strained the definition of "reusable" by needing major components that weren't reusable at all, and requiring the Shuttle itself to be almost entirely rebuilt between launches.
Now we're seeing more specialized designs. Heavy cargo launchers can be much cheaper when they don't have to carry people. Crew launch vehicles can be made safer at less cost if they aren't also being asked to carry heavy cargo loads.
The X-37B, if it leads to spacecraft that are truly reusable, could be another step toward making everything we do in space less costly and more productive. In the long run, that goal is far more important than any other mission in space, whether the short term goals are military or civilian ones.
Subsidization of the economy through the Pentagon system suggests a complicated ship for a simple mission would be acceptable.
X37 was a lifting body.
Two other methods for reentry.
Man Out Of Space (MOOS) (50's or 60's?) was a proposal for an emergency escape system from a spacecraft that invoved the use of a heat shield in a can. A foam filled bag that froze into a giant blob was deployed from the back of an astronaut that acted as a balute and heat shield. The astronaut actually used a hand held rocket gun to de-orbit. I've heard of ballutes with relation to other projects, but can't think of the source at the moment.
The Roton launch vehicle (1990's) looked something like DC-X (tail-first SSTO and landing) intended to use rotors to slow it down as it descended tail first from orbit, much like a helecopter during an unpowered landing. A prototype was flown that demonstrated a landing using rocket-powered rotors. Tom Clancy was involved in funding it, but he had to back out when his finances got scrambled by a divorce, eventually leading to the company's demise.
science is a religion
If you are referring to $1000 toilet seats, I have news for you, that is not why the seats cost $1000.
If the US went to war at some point in the next decade or two with Korea, Iran, China, etc., it would likely need the ability to rapidly re-deploy satellites that are knocked out. In case you think an altercation between China and the US is unlikely, they've reportedly already started messing around with US spy satelites by shining big ground based lazers at them (possibly to blind them).
Something to think about: if China or another nation knocked out an unmanned facility in "international" territory (e.g. a satelite) for whatever reason, do you think the US would go to war over it? Having a quick launch capability or ability to change orbits for existing satellites gives another option that doesn't involve applying force, such as "impounding" said country's space hardware.
science is a religion
Actually, there will probably be a few stepping stones between now and then before they can actually use it against us like that. First they'll have to guard us from Communism, then it'll be terrorists. Next it will be 3rd world countries, then hijacked spacecraft/weapons. Next we'll turn the weapons around and start facing external threats--this will lead to huge weapons capable of destroying incoming asteroids. Lastly you'll find out about E.T.'s that may or not be a threat so we'll have to develop even more space-based weapons, just in case. Lastly, when no other threats can reasonably be assumed, it will be your great or great-great grandkids the government's invents as a threat.
Note: I can't take credit for that progression since I didn't come up with it. I actually forget where I heard it at back in the 80's, but so far they're correct.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Do you understand anything about orbital mechanics? Orbiting spacecraft cannot "loiter" except in a very few, very special kinds of orbits. The cannot meaningfully "reposition" with the specific impulse limitations of the engines and fuel available today. Oh, the heck with it: for all intents and purposes they cannot meaningfully do ANY of the things your message suggests.
Doc, those people aren't starving. When the government says some people "have hunger" or "food insecurity", it's really the literal meaning. Sometimes they're hungry. That's not the same thing as starving - if you ever see a TV segment on this the thing that will jump out at you is most of them are grossly fat.
So no, 12% of Americans are not starving. Additionally, the government is getting these statistics from bureaucrats that want a bigger budget, who in turn are asking people on public assistance, in effect, if they want more money. So this number is very suspect even for what it is.
If you dig deeper you'll find these are people who are "falling through the cracks", and by that I don't mean there aren't programs to help them, I mean they aren't doing what they need to do to get the assistance that's available. So money isn't the solution to this problem.
Exactly. Any of the things that he is suggesting are possible (say interdiction) are better done by missiles anyway.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
12% of Americans are starving? That's absolutely ridiculous. That would be 36 million people.
v. starved, starving, starves
v.intr.
1. To suffer or die from extreme or prolonged lack of food.
You can't be serious.
Tell that to the people living in the 15% of households here in NYC who spent time starving 2003-5.
Where do you get your certainty that the starving people are just lying to get more money? I get mine that they're starving from various government studies which are trying to deny that Americans are starving, to save money (to send it to Iraq, instead), but which can't hide the fact that Americans are starving.
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I don't want to start you with reverse Soviet Union jokes, but come on, unmanned reusable spacecraft should have been a reality for at least a couple of decades.
This advance is getting into orbit with a 1980's Russian rocket motor design (RD-180 in the Atlas) so I don't think NASA cares about the Jingoism and just wants to do what they can with what they can get until they get a good design. The dominate space thing comes down to noisy people in politics who won't provide the funding for their silly schemes.
When political pressures require that an unmanned craft have a teacher subroutine, then we know that bureaucrats have replaced engineers in making engineering decisions, and it soon will crash and burn.
Actually none of those 15% of NYC households were starving, they were all fed through charities and food stamps. There is no evidence that large amounts of people in NYC are facing extreme malnutrition outside of the fashion model industry.
On the other hand, each week 3,500 Zimbabweans actually die from malnutrition. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe at 34 for women and 37 for men, thanks mainly to a government that does not protect private property, but takes it whenever it wants.
It's worth noting that a high speed suborbital spaceplane was actually mentioned in the History Channel's program on Area 51, some years ago. The man who mentioned it in the program, Mark Farmer, speculated that its' use would primarily be as a fast international troop dropship, although this article does not seem to indicate that.
The HC program also mentioned how it had been later discovered that aircraft such as the AR-71 Blackbird were being developed at Groom some time before official public announcements were made, and that aircraft whose existence was continually officially denied would suddenly be released to a museum after they had been decommissioned. This article possibly lends more evidence in support of that being the case.
Even from a purely empiricist, non UFO perspective, it is tantalising to wonder about what other things they're possibly cooking up under the ground out there, as well...especially considering both the amazing technological advancement and aesthetic beauty of the aircraft we have already seen produced by the facility. This article and the historical cases (such as the Blackbird and stealth programs) also possibly lend hope to the idea that given enough time after the development of the individual inventions/aircraft, we will eventually be able to find out.
As long as space technology is as expensive as it is, that might be, to some extent. As long as we still need rocket power to get into space, it'll always be an expensive endeavor.
However, we'll always need space research for satellites, etc., at least in the foreseeable future.
Are you reading the articles you're quoting?
First of all, this article, like the last one, doesn't say anything about starvation. It says hunger. You're a technical guy, so let me put it this way, okay? Hunger != Starvation for the purposes of government studies. What they're saying is that 15.4% of New Yorkers said they didn't think they had enough food at least one time over a three year period. That doesn't necessarily mean they didn't get enough calories to be healthy, it means that they didn't get enough calories to be sated. At least once. How many times? We don't know from these numbers.
Secondly, are you really so innocent as to accept without corroboration the statistics provided by advocacy groups? Lots of times these "studies" are nothing more than press releases. When they aren't, they're not done by statisticians but rather people who needed your help to pass basic math in college. Reporters don't know any better, since they never took statistics either. The time frame for the numbers is suspicious, since you can show anything you want with historical data as long as you pick the right time period.
Thirdly, I know this may come as a shock to people in the Big Apple, but New York != America. If that many people are having trouble in NYC they need to consider living somewhere else before asking the rest of us to pay their way.
Finally, did you see the part where the article says "...city employees will visit food pantries and soup kitchens during the holidays to help residents fill out food stamp applications"? The programs are in place, but, like I said in my last post, they're not applying. If they were really starving don't you think they'd apply for food stamps?
The Airforce has data from the X-15, the SR-71, the Space Shuttle, the Delta Clipper, and pretty much everything from the X-30 through somewhere in the X-40's. They don't need the Japanese design. What they need is funding, commitment, and trust. Three things that the executive branch of the US Government fails in spades to provide.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Flamebait? Looks like a fairly valid point to me.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Uh, actually, underfed people are usually fat (they look kind of swollen). I have no idea if this is the case, just thought I'd mention it (yeap, lots of shittily fed people where I live).
>Multiple stealthy orbiting craft can cluster over an enemy, then strike or wait as required.
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cluster _over_ an enemy or _wait_?
24/7 presence over the battlefield?
Methinks you don't know what 'orbiting' means.
Unmanned sounds nice... but who will feed the sharks on these trips?
If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you press it against me?
Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation states that any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.
.... :):):)
Ahem
The US Air Force has announced that it is developing an unmanned reusable spaceplane [CC], the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.
I wonder if the production model is going to have human cargo? It seems not. Humans require a lot of support systems to make the trip. All those support systems take up weight and volume, reducing the cargo carrying capacity of the vehicle.
With the advances in flight automation one wonders how long it will before ground based systems are controlling aircraft instead of a crew in front? I doubt we'll ever completely remove the need for a skilled person who can take over in the event of a system failure, but I'm guessing it won't be long before the human up front spends most of their time reading magazines. When you look at craft like the Predator Drone it would seem that technology is, at a minimum, reshuffling the hierarchy. Autonomous systems in the lead, ground based control as back up, and oh, yeah, the pilot on board in case everything goes to crap.
I wonder why more automation technology hasn't been applied to cargo vessels on the oceans? It seems like that would be a slam dunk for robot pilots or satellite control. Put the humans on board when they hit coastal waters. It would change the design of ships so they could be sealed during transit. If the remote system fails it just shuts down and bobs around until someone can helo out to get it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I know what the definition of "starving" is, believe me.
Why don't you click on the link I helpfully provided, or google for yourself? The effort you just took to look up the definition to deny the facts could have been spent reading the actual reports of the facts. And learning something.
And maybe learning how to do something to feed Americans. A pretty good way to observe Thanksgiving, instead of just eating ourselves unconscious while our neighbors go to be hungry.
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Oh, yeah, then there's no problem then. Ready for your third helping of stuffing?
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Moderation -2
50% Offtopic
50% Flamebait
Look at the moderation of the posts in this subthread. People denying hungry Americans get applause. I get booed for pointing out that we're feeding the military contractors, but not our neighbors.
No wonder the military gets the money, and our neighbors go hungry. In our rich, "Christian" nation.
Happy Thanksgiving, trollMods. God might forgive you, as you force down another slice of turkey and gravy, but I don't.
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Moderation -1
100% Overrated
TrollMods work to deny that hungry New Yorkers even exist.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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The reactions by mods and repliers to my documented points about hunger and military spending show just how the status quo of inverted values is enforced in America. The people replying in this thread will not go hungry, probably, as they can pay for Net connections and computers. They read Slashdot to brag about the toys they have, had, and want, indulging a technofetish that is the main male consumerism. Hungry Americans are mostly out of sight, in ghettoes (urban and otherwise), never put on the TV that passes for American consensus reality, and hiding in shame.
Meanwhile, how many of these people angrily denying their neighbors are hungry, that the fed shouldn't help the hungry to eat, are propped up by New York City in their Welfare States. Residents of these mainly rural/Western/Southern states pretend to a culture of "self-reliance", "independence" from the coastal "Blue" states they usually call "Communist" or worse. Yet Blue states like mine (NY) prop them up. Without our Federal corporate subsidies to them, they'd be starving, too. Their neighbors cut out of the Federal Welfare loop often are starving. And they suck money out of places like NYC, which clearly supports giving away money in socialistic "wealth redistribution", which we could instead reinvest locally. To help our neighbors, and improve our local economies.
Those Welfare States are the product of the post-WWII political economics. We needed to pour money into the "flyover states" to keep the country together in the Cold War. Someplace to keep our missiles. And then the Republicans taking over Congress immediately after the Cold War cranked up the subsidies cranked up the subsidies. Pork to their home states. And bait to attract immigration and population growth, even unsustainably. For the greater bribes from local "developers" that don't need local economic support when there's Federal subsidy. And because switching population growth from Blue to Red states means more Republican Representatives in the House, which also means more Red Electoral College ballots.
Compassionate Conservatism. Murdering turkeys and ignoring the poor.
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We are supposed to believe that those are the last limited deployment black budget flying machines that the government has.
Uh huh, with just about the entire history of governmental aircraft design having a black budget program, all of a sudden they just stopped???
Guess I just don't believe that. I think they already have stuff like they are talking about developing.
Don't be fooled by the size of someone. Yes, people can get fat by eating too much but they can also get fat by eating the wrong things. The sad thing is that many low income people don't have the education to maintain a balanced diet and if you don't have the money for rent it becomes difficult to even cook for yourself, let alone store food. Contrary to popular belief, in many low income households he provider(s) work long hours and multiple low wage jobs just to scrape by. This leaves little or no time for proper nutrition. In all these cases fast food becomes a mainstay, because of it's low relative cost and it can make you feel full. As we all know, a diet like this leads too a host of short and long term medical problems, like obesity and malnourishment, especially if you combine it with alcohol.
As for budgetary pressure, yes, every one wants more so they can do more, this isn't new. However, this is not a reason to doubt the figures; America is leading the charge in the developed world with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking. This means that assistance budgets must now grow faster than the rate of inflation, just to maintain the same levels of assistance! Since the middle class pays a huge portion and they are the shrinking class, the relative burden on each of them grows even faster!
Sure - in some paranoid fantasy universe. Here in the real world our space policy is pretty much the same as our air and sea policies, "the US uses this and reserves the right to protect our usage from interference". (If you haven't read the policy, I suggest you do. The linked article is based on some fantasy - not on the actual policy.)
Sure - in some Star Trek universe where the laws of physics have been suspended. Here in the real world, you'd need fuel tanks the size of a medium oil tanker for 'a few' to knock out any significant fraction of other countries space capabilities. (Worse yet, they'd be *more* obvious - because when their orbits changed to intercept, observers would know Something Is Up.)
It should be noted that this is a DARPA project, and NASA really had nothing to do with this test. The big NASA logo on the side is left-over from before NASA dropped the project and it was transfered to DARPA (i.e. the military).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Instead of those damned expensive Atlas V rockets, they should use the X-4000 Launch Apparatus to hurl it skyward.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
OK, OK, I misspelled grammar, but I did not misspell a perjorative word. The man probably had to live down his name everywhere outside some parts of Louisiana, but if a person could claim credit for the Mercury spacecraft blunt body reentry shape, the solid rocket escape tower, and the throttable descent engine on the Lunar Module, I guess there are certain things one could shrug off.
"Crew launch vehicles can be made safer at less cost if they aren't also being asked to carry heavy cargo loads"
The Ares 1 rocket, which will launch the crew capsule of future moon missions is, by most standards, a heavy launch vehicle. It has a low-earth-orbit payload comparable to the delta IV - Heavy, titan 4, and Atlas 5 Heavy. It is also not a cheap rocket. The Atlas 5 on which this test vehicle will be launched, costs a couple hundred million dollars to launch.
While there are efforts to make space cheaper, I'm not sure that this is one of those. This used to be a join air force & nasa project. Now that Nasa is putting it's bets on CEV and Ares, it's interesting that the air force is funding this alone. Whatever the motive is, it's something military, not cheap-space access. Skip-bombers maybe?
Doc, how many times do I have to tell you - SHUT UP!!! So what if 12% of Americans are starving? 100% would be DEAD if we didn't fund our troops! If 12% can't/won't work hard enough to pay for food, maybe it would be best for everyone if they quit taking up air and space, too. A few starving people is a small price to pay for national security. They're probably just illegal immigrants anyway.
And likewise thinks that spending that extra spaceplane money (on top of the existing $TRILLION a year) on something not the Pentagon would destroy national security.
This is the "Compassionate Conservatism" running the US government for the past 6-12 years.
Feel safer?
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