Slashdot Mirror
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!"
That is probably the oddest article summary I've ever seen here.
Reads like a promo for the new X Files movie.
simon
Not to mention the possibility of a Goa'uld Ha'tak coming to invade Earth!
their called democrats
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It's clearly X-Com. They're preparing for the inevitable invasion from Mars.
Remember, when the aliens come, don't walk around in circles on the street. They love it when you do that, and since the X-Com teams can't shoot straight, you may be caught by friendly fire.
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!
UFO sightings does this explain? Military planes take 20 or more years of testing, and TFA says they've flowin it before. So how many times did someone in the Southwest spot one and say, "That ain't no plane. It's movin way too fast!"
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Kinda like how Enterprise flew from the back of a 747
They flew an AIRCRAFT CARRIER on the back of a 747? How did I miss that?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Isn't space meant to be like demilitarized zone or something?
Yes, the Outer Space Treaty prohibits military bases, any kind of weapon tests and the permanent placement of WMD anywhere outside the Earth's atmosphere (nuclear ICBMs are OK as long as they stay in space only temporary on their way to their destination).
But the article (and even more so the summary) is mostly sensationalist crap: the real news here is that they are doing a test of the small and unmanned Boeing X-37B technology demonstrator. But I guess yet another engineering step in a slow technology development program doesn't sound as much as newsworthy for people that are not in this kind of thing.
Oh, BTW, there has never been anything like a "secret military shuttle" (you simply can't hide anything like that in space). There where a few NASA Shuttle missions in the 80s dedicated to the deployment of military satellites, but the DoD has for a very long time launched its payloads on Atlas and Delta rockets. If something is broken, it's much chepear to simply launch a new one that to mount a risky STS maintenance mission (and the Shuttle can't reach most of the orbits used by military satellites). So this has absolutely nothing to do with the planned STS retirement in 2010.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I'm pretty much a hardcore Republican that thinks Obama is a sort of Pharonic anti-christ, but, Obama's criticisms of NASA suddenly stand in stark relief when we suddenly see that the USAF is actually building a credible spaceplane and NASA, in its Constellation program, is admitting that it can't do it. Sure, one might argue that NASA is strapped for funds, but I like how the USAF had no problem turning to White Knight to test its stuff out rather than NIH'ing the whole program. Maybe we -do- need to kill NASA's manned space flight program.
This is my sig.
The treaty that you speak of was signed by the Soviet Union, NOT Russia. As hard as it is to believe, those two political organizations have almost nothing in common.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ion engines: No
Laser cannons: No
Photon torpedos: No
Shields: No
Warpcore/hyperspace drive: No
Matter/antimatter reactor: No
Transporters: No
Long Range Scanner: No
Sort Range sensors: Yes
Space capabilities: Kind of.
Buyers advice:
This space fighter doesn't have any of the selling features of other space fighters on the market. The lack of ion engines make this a very dated craft. It is more appropriate for a museum than the space age. Buyers are adviced to look into more complete craft like the X-wing or the TIE-advance. This craft makes the old and very well known to be unsafe TIE-fighter look good.
1) They didnt even get the RIGHT CRAFT.
2) There never was EVER a secret military shuttle... there where plans to make military shuttles, but they where hardly secret and never made it past the drawing board AS a military project. You could say some of their ideas went into the STS, but then thats hardly a secret.
This isnt even technically a shuttle... its a test bed system which is something NASA and the military have launched multiple times.. again technically the Air Force can not even launch the thing as a military object, it would go against the treaties in place and while I do not put it past our current government, they likely will not be in power when this thing is supposed to be tested and certainly if it get the green light for production.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The US is insane when it comes to overkill. Half of all taxes go to the military, and our forces dwarf Russia, China, and the "axis of evil" combined.
Wow, you pulled that out of your ass.
2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fy2008spendingbycategory.png
21% goes to our dwindling Social Security porgram.
16.6% goes to the DoD
13.3% goes to Medicare
11.2% goes to unemployment
9% pays the interest on national debt
7.2% goes to Medicaid
5% went to the war on terror
2.4% Health and Human Services
etc.
So to summarize: only 21.6% went to the protection of the U.S. whereas well over 60% went to social programs
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Half of all taxes go to the military
Minor nit... its 20-36%, depending on how you run the numbers. The only way you can get to 50% is if you remove social security taxes and assign nearly all debt payments as "military debt". If you just take military spending and divide it by total government outlays you get 36%, including the extra war spending in Afghanistan and Iraq.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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!
Art Bell, our guest editor for the day. Art Bell ladies and gentlemen! Let's give him a big round of applause!
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Well, technically ICBMs leave the atmosphere on their path to the target so we can do that already...
Although the fact that they're ballistic (following the path determined only by initial velocity and gravity)) technically means that they are in orbit, most people don't consider a highly eccentric trajectory that intersects the planet's surface to be an orbit. Also, merely leaving the atmosphere does not count as being in orbit.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
So, are you implying that the Ministry of Agriculture really is in charge of Gundam?
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Yup, you're right. I mean, what kind of idiots would use existing facilities just to fly an incomplete vehicle to test minor characteristics such as its "flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry". Everyone KNOWS that the correct way to do it is to build the complete system first, right down to the leather seats, and THEN see if any of your assumptions about flight characteristics are correct.
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.
In exchange for getting the USSR's nukes from the former republics, the Russian Federation agreed to take on all debts and treaty obligations of the USSR, meaning that the treaty applies to Russia (Also See: the uproar over Russia withdrawing from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty)
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
True. But back in the 90's when the Soviet Union became the Commonwealth of Independent States, the CIS explicitly took over the role and responsibilities of the USSR with regards to various treaties and agreements that the USSR was a party to. Which means the CIS, and by extension Russia as a member state, is still bound by the Outer Space Treaty.
If you re-ran the 2007 budget using the "accrual" method of accounting that corporations must use, the "official" deficit of $163 billion balloons to over $2.4 trillion dollars -- FOR 2007 ALONE!
Indeed, if the US Federal government was a private corporation, it would be considered "insolvent," but on the other hand they have guns and can take as much in taxes from us as they want, which a private corporation can't do (even the oil companies :)