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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."
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.
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.
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!
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
...telephone poles and crowbars from orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment)
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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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.
I haven't seen anybody else mention it in this thread, but there was a really interesting pre-launch teleconference with Air Force Deputy Under Secretary for Space Programs (and former astronaut) Gary Payton. Payton gave quite a few details about the program I hadn't seen elsewhere, giving additional insight into the program's purpose and future plans. I've pasted a few highlights below:
http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/tag/gary-payton/
http://www.defense.gov/Blog_files/Blog_assets/PaytonX-37.pdf
Question: Mark Matthews with the Orlando Sentinel. ... ...
Two quick questions. If the tests are successful is the Air Force looking to be able to build more of these planes? And what do you say to concerns about how this could lead to the increased weaponization of space?
Mr. Payton: We do have a second tail number on contract. Currently we're looking at a 2011 launch for that second tail number. That assumes everything goes properly as predicted on this first flight. And truthfully, I don't know how this could be called wedaponizatino of space. It's just an updated version of the space shuttle kind of activities in space. We, the Air Force, have a suite of military missions in space and this new vehicle could potentially help us do those missions better.
Question: Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor.
I guess I would just wonder if you could explain a little bit more about what the flight will test and clarify one thing. Is there not going to be a specific payload on it this time, or is there going to be and you can't tell us what it's going to be? Can you give us some sense of it? There seems to be a lot of mystery around the flight and I'm not sure if that's intended or not.
Mr. Payton: Like in many of our space launches, not all of them but many of them, the actual on-orbit activities we do classify. So we're doing that in this case for the actual experimental payloads that are on orbit with the X37. But again, our top priority is demonstrating the vehicle itself with its autonomous flight control systems, new generation of silica tile, and a wealth of other new technologies that are sort of one generation beyond the shuttle.
Question: It could capture a spacecraft that's already on orbit and bring it down for servicing or what have you?
Mr. Payton: Not on this flight. Again, this flight's intend is the experiments themselves, both during ascent, during entry, and on orbit. But there's no arm on this one.
Question: A quick follow-up on in-orbit capability. Do you have, what kind of props on this thing? I know you can get up to like 500 nautical miles, something like that. Is there any expectation to do some orbit maneuvering of this vehicle to different altitudes? ...
Mr. Payton: Just the way we handle satellites in general. We would, and like we handle low earth orbit satellites. We move them a little bit with their own on-board propulsion system.
You're starting to touch on the notion of using a winged vehicle to really change the inclination of the orbit by sort of dipping into the top of the atmosphere and turning and then bouncing back up off the top of the atmosphere. You need a very very good, very very high. Again, hypersonic lift over drag, in order for that to be beneficial. This bird does not have that high hypersonic lift over drag ratio that you would need to do that kind of maneuver.
Sorry, I didn't intend to give a lecture on Aero 562.
Question: Air Force Magazine.
You talked before about how this could handle a small sized satellite. In more lay person's terms, what does that mean? Is the payload large enough to hold like a Volkswagen Beetle or an SUV? Can you give us some idea there?
Mr. Payton: You know our ORS program, Operation Responsive Space?
Question: Yes.
Mr. Payton: Maybe a couple of satellites that are a few hu
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?