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US To Launch Military Orbital Spaceplane
An anonymous reader writes "Not only is the US readying its first 100% military spaceplane for a November launch, but it's going to push NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission til 2009: 'The USAF and Boeing will launch the X-38B — the first military orbital space plane if you discount the secret military shuttle — on top of an Atlas V rocket in November. They want to test its flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry. And probably its anti-matter rays and nuclear bays and hyperspace engines too (but of course, they are never going to tell you that). However, there seems to be a conflict with the civilian space program which may push one of the Moon exploration missions to 2009.' Screw the moon. We have to defend ourselves against all those alien extremists from Mars!"
Not to mention the possibility of a Goa'uld Ha'tak coming to invade Earth!
So does this mean we finally will have the ability to 'nuke it from orbit'? 'It' being the terrorist-sheltering target of the week.
Not if the target has a substantial monetary value.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
their called democrats
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Although there's not much content to TFA,
;?)
it is an interesting subject.
Personally I'm not keen to see a militarisation of "Space",
but the technologies that are almost
certain to spring from such areas will surely
feed back into civilian areas.
Besides, it might just be too expensive and
morally difficult (to convince any electorate)
in order to make any serious claims to "Space Ownership"
by any military power.
ps. I'm not trying to fuel the trolls here, just trying to anticipate them
Isn't space meant to be like demilitarized zone or something?
You'd be referring to the Outer Space treaty, right? Well, it doesn't actually block the militarization of space, just the placement of weapons of mass destruction. So long as they don't fill this thing with nukes they should be fine. While I'm an outright pacifist, it is good to see actual progress in space travel, perhaps the discoveries made by engineering this spaceplane will advance more peaceful spacecraft in the future.
Re-railing this first thread:
1. The first picture on gizmodo clearly shows a X-40A, not an X-37B.
2. Secret military shuttles?
3. Secret orbital bases?
Kind of hard to have secret anything these days, especially aircraft that fly into space, and more so for things that are in orbit. Any nut job with a telescope can see stuff in orbit. Shuttles lifting off are fairly dramatic, and show up on satellite scans like a turd in a punch bowl. As for secret shuttles, why bother when the DoD just schedules a military launch of one of the shuttles and keeps the payload a secret. And where are 'they' hiding the orbital platforms? Behind the moon?
Seriously, what kind of paranoid lunatics write stories over at gizmodo? They should stick to reviewing the iPhone and keeping tabs on Steve Jobs' not so well hidden agenda to take over the Interweb and make it so only Apple equipment is used.
Sheesh!
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
You have to remember, the military has a mission they're focused on and want to get the tools they need to complete. NASA's mission for the most part seems to be making sure they keep their budget. Not saying that military contracting is a paragon of efficiency, but generally having a defined goal that everyone believes in helps a lot to keep you on track.
There's also the failed Space Preservation Act.
Which is about as relevant as the Articles of Confederation
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Uhhh... the jabs about the secret shuttle (and its anti-matter rays and hyperspace engines) along with the orbital space station (complete with nuclear bays and chemical lasers) were pretty obviously tongue-in-cheek. You know, when somebody says something so completely ridiculous that it's taken as a given that the reader won't take them seriously?
Exactly, we're fighting a guerilla warfare, so what could possibly be the use of remaining the top dogs? Let's just wait until the Chinese get the upper hand on that whole "space" thing to worry about catching up with them. By all means let's make R&D policies based on short/mid-term concerns. If something isn't going to be useful to alleviate our concerns of the hour within the next few years then it's clearly a waste of time and money.
You just got troll'd!
Something that has to be launched from an Atlas missile, has no docking facilities, no cargo space...this will replace the Shuttle how,exactly?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
always mean lower taxes down the road! Good plan! I love the theory that once politicians get a certain amount of money, they just don't want any more. I'm guessing your kids will only have to pay 1-2% income tax.
NASA and the Air Force have different missions here. NASA want to go to the Moon and Mars, and a space plane can't do that. USAF is trying to build something to fly into space around the Earth.
I am content with both missions being done.
As for Obama, his idea of halting work on manned spaceflight in order to increase Science and Technology education is completely backwards. Just using /. as a reference, most of the people interested in Science and Technology are keenly interested in space flight and exploration. Most of us as kids growing up followed very closely NASA and its space program, and most of us (demographically speaking) do not remember man walking on the Moon. Obama's insistence in killing funding for manned space exploration will guarantee the US a backseat in space exploration by the end of this century and all the money he will have spent on Science education will be wasted.
The kids growing up in this country are hammered with the message that to be rich and successful you need to either be a movie/rock star, sports star, lawyer, or doctor. The engineering field is suffering an uphill battle to continue to attract young people to the field. Whether its correct or not, manned spaceflight, and in fact the entirety of NASA's programs is the largest PR engine to fuel the interest of the next generation in engineering disciplines. Without it, no matter how much you spend on education, without the vision provided by the great engineering challenges NASA takes on, the engineering field in the US will slowly die.
I'm pretty much a hardcore Republican that thinks Obama is a sort of Pharonic anti-christ,
With that kind of statement, why in the world would you expect anything else you say to be taken seriously?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The facts are there, you just need to look for them. However, the idea that revenues are up can easily be counters with "and if taxes were X we would have X more" or "you don't know that the tax cuts caused that increase" when it is obvious from every other tax cut in a weak economy that it brings motion that increases revenues. The vast majority of people wouldn't know the difference and we wouldn't be any worse off.
The bottom line is that the republicans are in a tight situation. There is so much fud going around that they couldn't win if they wanted to. The Major pains if the gas prices started after the dems took control of congress in 2006, we didn't even have $3 gas back then. But they seem to be the "popular ones who can fix? it somehow. The federal budget has increased after they took office too yet the republicans are getting the blame for the deficit spending because of the two wars. It isn't like the democrats don't know what will be spent or what is being spent on the wars and that they don't have the opportunity to cut spending so a surplus budget could cover the costs of the war. But as the great GP just said, tax and spend now instead of taxing their kids.
I mean hell, you will even hear about how the dems ballances the budget in the 90's even though republicans controlled congress, set spending, and made the budget that was passed and sent to Clinton. Forget about the funding wars where Clinton vetoed budgets because there wasn't enough for a certain program or because there was too much in another. Forget about the dot come buble that increased revenue which was completely unique to the times and tied closely to the Capitol gains tax cuts. Forget about all the Roth IRA conversions where someone who has saved 2 million dollars for retirement was able to pay taxes on the 2 million then and not when they withdrew it at retirement. Forget about being able to spread that out over four years time, which had the effect of encouraging people to convert thereby giving the government a surplus tax income that should have been paid out 10 or more years in the future. But all that doesn't matter as long as the democrats take credit for it. It doesn't matter at all that there was 3 maybe 4 specific and non-repeatable situations that happened that increased the federal revenue quite a bit for a real short time.
As another person in this thread mentioned, the problems are both parties. Both of them know how much the war is costing and neither of them are cutting spending to ease the deficit. The numbers are there, the sources are scattered all around and it won't be hard for you to find what the parent said about the tax cuts raising revenues, but it isn't exactly black and white and neither party can take advantage of it.
BTW, McCain has already pledged to not remove the tax cuts. Obama, after finding out how many lower income-non-rich people would be effected by it has changed his stand from removing the Evil Bush Tax Cuts to removing part of them if you make more then $250,000 a year. He now wants to decrease or lower taxes on those same non-rich people who benefited from the Bush Tax cut for the Rich. This is probably why he almost all but gave up on pushing his health care initiatives. He can't cut taxes and pay for that at the same time if we were to believe what he originally said about both. None of these issues is cut and dry because of all the FUD surrounding all of them.