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USAF's Robotic X-37B Orbiter Launched For Test Flight
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "The United States Air Force's novel robotic X-37B space plane is tucked inside the bulbous nose cone of an unmanned rocket that blasted off Thursday from Florida on a mission shrouded in secrecy. ... The unmanned military Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1) — also known as the X-37B — lifted off at 7:52 pm EDT atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a mission that is expected to take months testing new spacecraft technologies. ... Key objectives of the space plane's first flight include demonstration and validation of guidance, navigation, and control systems – including a 'do-it-itself' autonomous re-entry and landing at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base with neighboring Edwards Air Force Base as a backup."
oh no watch all the left wing closest conservatives whip themselfs for daring to read news from fox!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Is autonomous tech really that difficult now? At the very least couldn't it fall back to remote control? I could swear the Sovs did some work like this back in the 70s.
Marvin the Martian: "At last, after two thousand years of research, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. At last..."
Marvin the Martian: "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"
Here's the space shuttle we lost, OK at 1/4 scale, but without the triple redundancy because it doesn't have to carry people. It can do the missions.
The future of space, at least in the near term, doesn't look so great for astronauts.
I wonder if it would scale up to shuttle size?
Bruce Perens.
Making me use a proxy to be able to post more often than a Muhammaddamn spammer!
The first re-usable nuclear missle :-)
X-37 is, like the shuttle, meant to soft-land and be re-used. Nuclear missles are meant to get somewhere really fast and avoid anti-ballistic missles, and blow themselves up. Not really the X-37 mission.
It's for spy satellites, among other things. Nuclear missles can get anywhere in two hours already.
Bruce Perens.
I heard anywhere on earth in one hour, (conventional weapons only)unless you believe this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23strike.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igw
Get up!
X-37 is, like the shuttle, meant to soft-land and be re-used
Not only that. Since it's unmanned space vehicle, it's designed to stay in orbit for as long as 300 days.
Which means, within that 300-day envelop, it can travel to any spot on earth in a 2-hour time frame to deliver a neuclear strike.
While existing ICBM definitely can achieve that task, they may be intercepted by anti-ICBM weapons that are already being deployed.
However, there is not that easy intercept the X-37B since it's on orbit all the time.
At least, not yet.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The purpose of the X-37 is for several things.
* Spy satellite recapture.
* Spy satellite de-orbit (killing).
* Rapid satellite deployment.
* As a communications platform of Network Centric Ops.
* Look-e-looing.
x
However, there is not that easy intercept the X-37B since it's on orbit all the time.
Why not? Unless it has a new kind of radar stealth technology it should be somewhat easy to track since it's launch time is know and a orbit is somewhat easy to propagate.
Most advanced air/space control organizations like NORAD and it's Russian counterpart are tracking every interesting target in orbit already.
It could be intercepted in reentry like a ICBM would or even in orbit by a kinetic device.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
...telephone poles and crowbars from orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment)
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Why not? Unless it has a new kind of radar stealth technology it should be somewhat easy to track since it's launch time is know and a orbit is somewhat easy to propagate.
Of course X-37B can be tracked, just like any satellite. :)
The thing is, X-37B is used as a "missile carrier", not the bomb itself.
So let's say US wants to strike Venezuela the X-37B doesn't have to go to Venezuela. It can launch or "drop" the missile over the Pacific ocean or Atlantic ocean or even over the African continent and the missile, with the help of GPS, would seek out a way to strike Venezuela thousands of miles away.
But of course the Pentagon can choose to manuever the X-37B right over Venezuela and aim the missile straight down, point blank.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
doubt that, nukes not allowed in space, don't think russia, et. al. would be too impressed if this turned out to be a nuclear payload delivery mechanism. Anyway, all that just sounds a bit cold war-ish and soooo last century. :-)
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Exactly. Nukes are a solved problem. But for about 10 years I've wondered what the real-world inspiration was for novelist Dale Brown's ficticious NIRTSats(Need It Right This Second Satellites). As soon as the X-37B revival PR hit the blogosphere last month, I had a hunch. I see I'm not alone in my guess; even the timing of the novels and the programme is about right.
I'd have preferred to see the VentureStar take flight (on account of I hate the idea of waiting for hours for an airplane to haul my tourist ass a mere few thousand miles when I know there exist much more elegant - albeit expensive - solutions) but I gotta admit that for this particular sort of mission, robots beat humans. Sweet technology.
Uhhh, the USA, France, Britain, Russia and China can already drop a nuclear bomb on anyone, anywhere on earth, within about 10 minutes.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
In other words, they're testing a Buran.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Is the podbay big enough to hold Chinese or Russian satellites and bring them back down again? That seems to me what is really going on here - why otherwise would the USAF really care about getting stuff back down again? - they don't need their own satellites back - let them burn up in reentry - they are not collecting particulate matter, and I don't believe they will be going around hoovering up space junk. If the thing can stay up therewith it's solar panels for 270 days, maybe it is just wandering around picking up "rogue" satellites, attaching small engines and letting the satellites deorbit.
Does anyone know what the panels lining the rocket fairing are for?
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2009/10/22/nasas-secret-space-plane-nears-maiden-voyage?slide=4
An ICBM is a suborbital rocket with a relatively huge payload capacity because it doesn't need to carry its warheads all the way up to orbital speed, and it doesn't have to waste payload mass on landing structure like heatshields and wings. You can carry a hell of a lot more tricks for dodging countermissiles on an ICBM than you can with this toy shuttle's payload bay.
If you tried to use this space-UAV to carry a nuke, that's all you'd get. You could fit one nuke into it with no penetration aids, very limited guidance, very limited ability to maneuvre.
This machine isn't a bomber, it's a combination of spyplane and sabotage device. Just remember that big engine it carries is going to be easily powerful enough to deorbit an enemy spy sat, destroying it without creating a load of debris that would damage US military satellites in the process.
Uhhh, the USA, France, Britain, Russia and China can already drop a nuclear bomb on anyone, anywhere on earth, within about 10 minutes.
10 minutes ??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yup. There is a foreign submarine bearing a nuclear bomb armed missile or three, off your coast right now...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yup. There is a foreign submarine bearing a nuclear bomb armed missile or three, off your coast right now...
My country doesn't have a coast, you insensitive clod!
Hmm, but many people don't realize why the doomsday clock has been stuck at about 6 minutes to midnight for half a century. Its time is not quite as arbitrary as most would like to hope.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Exactly. The scenario plays out like this:
U.S.: What a nice satellite you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
Them: What satellite? (It's a spy satellite, so they're not going to admit anything of course.)
U.S.: Well, we have other plans for that orbit. And we know it's there. So you should... You know...
Them: Nyuh uh...
U.S.: *Yoink!*
U.S.: Yeah, you were right. There wasn't a satellite there. My bad.
"There is a foreign submarine bearing a nuclear bomb armed missile or three, off your coast right now..."
F#cking terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
I say invade!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
An ICBM is a suborbital rocket with a relatively huge payload capacity because it doesn't need to carry its warheads all the way up to orbital speed, and it doesn't have to waste payload mass on landing structure like heatshields and wings. You can carry a hell of a lot more tricks for dodging countermissiles on an ICBM than you can with this toy shuttle's payload bay.
Wrong. An RV (Re-entry Vehicle) comes in on a mathematically fixed path (that's why it's called a BALLISTIC MISSILE). The minor course correction ability that they have is to improve accuracy. Besides, Even SPARTAN (LIM-49A) and GBI have the range to hit the warhead bus before discharge of the warheads. Plus ICBMs don't have the energy you think they do.
Orbit at low altitude is about 90 minutes. An ICBM has to go at most half way around the world, so 45 minutes from launch is about the max time you would expect for an ICBM. Montana to Afghanistan is 6,000 miles, or a 22 minute flight; overflight of Russia might be problematic. As pointed out in other posts sub launch to target is less than 10 minutes.
... and it's probably Israeli.
We can fix that in, oh, say, ten minutes
Oh, yeah, the cold war is, like, totally over. When was the last time the Russians flew nuclear bombers into Scotland's airspace anyway??
Oh, right, just a couple months ago.
I don't see the logic in this. Existing missles have a delta-V that could reach orbital velocity. That's why their boosters get re-used for civilian missions. If anyone wanted to loiter a missle in orbit, in contravention of the treaty about that, I would imagine that some of the existing MERV systems have that capability. But sitting one in orbit doesn't make it harder to shoot down when it re-enters, because regardless of how well it is stealthed it can be seen - if by no other means, when it occludes a star. Having it in orbit just makes destroying its launch pad irrelevant.
Submarines can go anywhere, and sit there for months, and launch a missle that arrives in 20 minutes rather than 2 hours. If you want to worry about US nuclear capability, worry about that.
Bruce Perens.
BBC coverage on X-37B
well, it's far less cold than it used to be, despite the letest rattlings from russia. US and russia now sogned another agreement to get rid of some of their stockpile. I think russia and US are quite-ish happy with the current status quo.
Why shake the bees nest by creating am orbiting nuke? By doing that US basically tells the world it's not giving a damn about the treaties they agrees to and all hell will be breaking lose (russian, china, etc all putting nukes in LEO, seeling nukes to countries that should not have it, etc, etc)
Especially as mentined elsewhere, they already pretty much have this cabability with subs.
They might use it with things like a MOAB is similar but bigger in there, packs quite a punch as well
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Are you sure the mother Russia didn't have anything "nuclear" up in the space during the Cold War?
But of course the Pentagon can choose to manuever the X-37B right over Venezuela and aim the missile straight down, point blank.
Alas, orbital mechanics don't work that way. To 'drop' a bomb, the entry vehicle would have to apply thrust opposed to its orbital trajectory. This would alter the orbital trajectory until the semi-minor axis of the orbit enters the atmosphere around about where you want your warhead to go. Given the energies and velocities involved (and the need for cooling during aerobraking) this approach path tends to be pretty shallow. Consequently, you have to start your deorbit burn a fair ways out. They'll still see it coming, even if you have freaky high delta-V and take the shorted route to ground.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I'm surprised that no conspiracy theorists have jumped on the idea that this mission was to replace the spy satellite that burned up on reentry over the midwest last week!
g=
As a UAV researcher, I like that acronym - Space Unmanned Aerial VEhicle. It's SUAVE!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I think it has to scale to the size of the shuttle, at least the shuttle's cargo bay.
One point that people are missing, the shuttle had mission requirements to be able to deliver big satellites for the military, it also had requirements go up and retrieve satellites for the military.
Neither Orion, Ares, or a Falcon 9 with a Dragon on top can do anything about retrieving a large military satellites the size of the shuttle's cargo bay.
DoD can launch all the satellites it wants on Atlas rockets, but all they can do without the shuttle is de-orbit them.
Like the stealth fighters and spyplanes, the military doesn't stop flying one thing until it can meet those mission requirements with something else.
Also the shuttle had a military requirement to go up, service, install or uninstall a satellite and then return in less than 1 orbit so the Russians couldn't see it. They talked about this ever so briefly on the MIT Aerospace lectures on the Shuttle program. They also said that this functionality was never used. I think it'd be pretty hard to hide a shuttle launch, and with satellites in orbit I think it would be hard to have a launch window/mission the Russians wouldn't know about.
The 9 month on orbit loitering time allows them to use a shuttle sized version of this thing to grab a satellite and land quickly. Couple this with a hardened version of the robot, not the CanadARM, but the actual man shaped telepresence robot for the ISS, and you could do repair missions on-orbit for 9 months without sending up multiple missions and astronauts getting around launch windows, weather delays, fuel tank sensors and every other delay the shuttle is heir to.
How is it going in Switzerland these days?
That's the discussion that I want to see here on slashdot. Wild speculation about what it's mission is. Here is my first shot at it:
- High Tech ASAT machine: ASAT tech (ballistic/laser) weapons mounted in the cargo bay. Makes sense except, why do you need it to come back down... cost of laser perhaps?
- Satellite Stealer: Go up, grab enemy satellite, bring it back down. Deprives enemy of the satellite, and lets you figure out how it works so you can perhaps destroy/disable others like it?
- Special Recon: Allows you to do tactical recon that current fleet of satellites can't do - put it in various different orbits to maximize loiter times?
- Prototype for First Space Fighter: Sure, the Russians already did that, sort of... they had a manned spy satellite with a machine gun on it... and fired it in space (but remotely and unmanned). This would potentially be much better - fit the cargo bay with life support and weapons?
So what is your SWAG as to what this is REALLY for?
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
If you want to deprive someone of a satellite on the sly, you don't bother with high kinetic gunfire or ASAT missiles, you hit it with a balloon filled with matte black paint at a comparatively low velocity. The satellite's ground controllers, will see a gradual failure from overheating and power loss, additionally possibly glitched optics if present and a little bit of tumble, eliminating high-gain antenna function. Heh.
They did. A fleet of ship tracking radar satellites got launched using onboard nuclear reactors instead of solar, to allow them to be kept low and not have to rely on batteries while in the Earth's shadow. They're widely regarded as being a stupid thing to have put in orbit because they leak coolant metals and create a vast amount of space debris.
Parent post is technically correct, but I think misleading in being too literal for this level of discourse.
MIRV designs do allow a single ICBM to carry decoys of various kinds, and jamming or shielding electronics can be added to any warhead, all at a relatively cheap cost in added weight since these things are suborbital. Additionally, the last fifty miles or so of an ICBM's warhead trajectory can be made very similar to the trajectory of a smart bomb with the simple addition of some small steering surfaces and target acquisition electronics. A smart warhead could be programmed to take some evasive aeronautic maneuvers and still reach its target.
Since I have no clearances and am not in any way privy to any of the relevant designs, I am of course speaking out of my ass. However it would be not only illogical, but totally irresponsible, for the USA not to have added such capabilities to the ICBMs in the 40+ years since they were first deployed. So I think it reasonable to assume that today's ICBMs do carry some countermeasures, since, as grandparent points out, the fuel cost for the added payload is well within reason.
Perhaps others who know more about the subject, and can find a way to talk about it without violating security, will speak up.
Will
Re-usable FOBS more like.
This gives the US a deniable FOBS now, they can launch them to stay on station for 9-12 months with a couple MIRVS, if something goes sideways in Iran or the DPRK on an orbit over the trouble spot they can drop a MIRV.
It avoids the launch tension from Russia over an ICBM or SLBM and it's "stealthy", if the trouble fades then the X-37 can land and there were never nukes in space.
The Russians have had FOBS tasked ICBMs for decades, and with the history of how Russia treats arms treaties*, I'm sure they still have them. I believe it was the SS-9 and then SS-18 mod 4 that were devoted to orbiting a nuke into orbit.
The R-36orb (SS-18) carried the 869 fractional-orbit missile.
* Read a book on the Soviet and Russian Federation bio-weapons treaty compliance, a Russian researcher said that they didn't comply because they assumed the US wouldn't comply. The US had thrown out most of the bioweapon program before the treaty was signed as Nixon hated the idea of bioweapons.
If you wanted to hit Venezuela from orbit, You wouldn't fire straight down, you'd fire backwards when you were over the Pacific.
Because during re-entry you can't communicate to a craft surrounded by ionized atmosphere and bits of burned off heat shield. Something similar happens during boost as well. Almost the entire instrumentation recorder/time shift industry was created as a result ,so data from launch and re-entry could be gathered and studied.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
After 50 years, dynasoar finally takes flight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasoar Better late than never.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Nice!
The problem overall with depriving someone of a satellite on the sly is after three or so uses of any method, it's not sly any more. Nothing scales up economically for repeat use, because any sudden rash of satellite failures would have their deployer thinking it can't be coincidence to lose that many that quickly.
Ergo, any method used is likely to be either a one shot attack, or an overwhelming attack against all an enemy's space capability (which, whatever else it is, won't be sly) - nothing in between. Governments are actually highly averse to funding one shot, in extremis programs such as killer asteroid stopping missions. Exceptions for clear and present danger may exist, but (to get back to the topic) it's unlikely if the 37b is part of one of them.
Who is John Cabal?
Well you have many details wrong.
1. ICBMs do reach speeds not far below orbital velocities and some do look up FOBBS.
2. ICBMs do have heatsheilds.Well the RVs do anyway.
Actually the idea of using a winged system like this does have some merit and the USAF has looked into it back in the late 60s and early 70s.
In theory you could have this reach a much lower altitude than an ICBM which would give you less time where you are over the horizon so the enemy would have less time to reach.
Also this test vehical looks like it has the same 1000 mi cross range ability as the shuttle so yes it could look like it was going one place and then at the last minute turn and hit a different target But I do not see it being used for that.
No to your idea about it as a sabotage. There is no way they would risk using this to deorbit or steal a satellite. It is to easy to put a self destruct on a satellite and take out this space UAV. This critter is not cheap to launch.
So what could they use it for besides research?
Simple as a space bomber quick strike weapon.
The 9 month parking time means you can put it into orbit and leave it there for a long time.
It will just sit there waiting. If you do not need it it de orbits and brings it's warhead home to be reused. After all you don't want a warhead to just come down someplace when it gets old do you?
Somebody gets out of line? You just drop one of these bad boys on there head. The crowbar or telephone pole from space kinetic kill weapon can take out a launch silo, ship, or just about any hard target you want all without any warhead at all. A nice targeted 1000lbs slug of tungsten carbide at 18,000 mph will really ruin your day.
You could pack a few different weapons maybe a few 20KG small ones for ships or mobile missle launchers and a big one for high value targets.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yup. There is a foreign submarine bearing a nuclear bomb armed missile or three, off your coast right now...
Except when they're in dry dock after managing to crash into each other at the bottom of the ocean...
I don't have clearance either (just an educated layman), and I seriously doubt that people with clearance would venture into this debate.
Except decoys and other countermeasures don't work. We (the US) have had the sensors and computers to differentiate between real RVs and decoys, because, unless the decoy has the exact size, mass, and thermal signature as the real thing, we can ignore it. How we can is by tracking it on radar (a less massive RV wouldn't react the same to the Earth's mass, that is it wouldn't fall so fast, due to less inertia to punch through the atmosphere). And Thermal properties are important because the electronics in nuclear devices are sensitive and like to be kept in a nice stable temperature range. (Major source for the above paragraph is B. Bruce-Briggs' work "The Shield of Faith").
As for MIRVs, any public time-lapse photographs, you will see that the individual RVs are released sequentially, not all at once like you see on TV (source - MX missile test photographs at the National Museum of the United States Air Force).
And yes, the minor course correction features of modern RVs to allow for some accuracy adjustments. This allows us to use smaller devices, which fits with the policy of not directly harming civilians (as codified the various Geneva Conventions), but not letting civilian casualties stop us.
It's a multi-mega watt laser. Rule of strategic thumb is not throw away usable weapons til the next better one is on line. Which is why Obama renounced nukes.
We have something better! ( Bits and pieces have been leaking out for some time and I have seen the craft actually fly, interesting drive.)
Nobody will read this post, fewer will believe it until after but low profiles are good.
He's talking about a big push to put stuff into orbit. I see several scenarios here:
Large solar flare destroying a bunch of satellites, replacement needed.
Some new weapon that can destroy a large number of satellites (ground based X-ray laser or an EMP/Nuclear weapon)
Reagan's Star Wars style satellites chain. I've heard we have some advances in Fiber laser efficiency. Any other recent big advances in beam weaponry?
well, reactors are a bit different than actual nukes, however I do agree it's bloody silly to keep them in LEO. For missions going elsewhere I can live with them.
Even US used nuclear power sources; voyager used RTGs iirc, although that bit more benign than actual reactors
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }