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US Air Force Launches Secret Flying Twinkie
Spectrummag writes "One of the most secretive US Air Force spaceflights in decades, launched this month, is keeping aficionados guessing as to the nature of the secret. The 6000-kilogram, 8-meter X-37B, nicknamed the flying Twinkie because of its stubby-winged shape, is supposed to orbit Earth for several weeks, maneuver in orbit, then glide home. What's it for? Space expert James Oberg tracks the possibilities."
Except Taco misquoted Ghostbusters. I wasn't going to point it out.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
A scaled up version of this could replace capabilities that the shuttle provided to the military.
Sure they launch sats on rockets now, but they can't do any of the maintenance with a rocket. Also is folks listened to the MIT lectures on building the shuttle, they mentioned that the engines in the shuttle wouldn't have to be torn down and rebuilt between flights if the electronics were built onto the engine such the engines could be tested without removing them.
I'm sure there are other what if style improvements that the shuttle built from blueprints could benefit from in the age of CAD that would aid in the rapid turnaround of any new vehicle designed with the Twinkie's test data.
This is just conjecture. On a 'big' war day we are going to want to disable enemy satellites. We have ground based interceptors -- but there can be delays in launch windows, plus the 'bad' guys are going to be on guard and can take some evasive actions.
How about our little X-37 with a cargo bay and manipulator arm goes and pays those 'nasty' satellites a visit right now and attaches a few pounds of high explosive with a radio detonator. When the war starts you push a button and they all disappear!
Just in case they send a maintenance flight up, our little bomblets can also be equipped with a radio controlled 'spring' that detaches them from the satellite. No one is the wiser.
Possible?
My logic (against a rival spacefaring nation): If you build it on a satellite, a strategically deployed paint fleck can render you defenseless until you can arrange for another satellite and launcher. Make a satellite maneuverable enough to dodge strategically deployed paint flecks and the fuel requirements may make your satellite huge and/or short lived. Put it on a space plane and you can dodge all you want, and just relaunch as needed if you don't dodge well enough.
My logic (against rogue states): if you build it on a geostationary satellite and guess wrong as to where the next threat is coming from, you now need another satellite. If you build it on a network of satellites, you need the whole bloody network to not have blind spots. If you build it on space planes, you just fly them over whomever is the rogue of the moment.
My logic (against the UN): satellites are subject to international treaties regarding the weaponizing of space. Planes-that-work-like-satellites are less so.
Or..., attach something that can futz with the function of the bird. Killing it outright certainly removes an asset from enemy hands, but turning that asset can, under certain conditions, be even more valuable.
I doubt this has anything at all to do with NASA, and NASA is in no position to reclaim anything from military projects.
This system is built on designs for flight test prototypes developed when the shuttle was being designed, and refined thereafter.
TFA says: "The official description of the mission talks of demonstrating "a rapid-turnaround airborne test bed." That makes sense, but there is no sign that anyone plans to fly the vehicle ever again" which is pure utter nonsense. You don't build a lander to fly once.
The article also suggests it will attempt never before attempted things such as automated approach and landing. Stuff the Russians demonstrated with SnowStorm. along with the automated rendezvous which Russian cargo launches have been doing for years.
This is the Air Forces access to payload deployment and return. There is no point in making it landable if all you need is delivery with no return.
This is the prototype of Predator Drone of space, and/or instantly deployable Command and Control platforms, with plausible dependability.
Ex-craniate folks, the Air Force does not intend to allow sat-killers go un-challenged when so much of US military operations rely on space based coms and control.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'd actually think that something like this would be ideal to TAKE OUT a satellite, or a satellite interceptor.
A polar orbit means that its relative velocity would be large compared to any less inclined orbit.
Ability to launch and return in a single polar orbit means that it would be hard to shoot down - it would have to fly right over an enemy launch site to do so since they wouldn't spot it until it was entering their airspace and there would be no time to vector an interception from elsewhere. You only have a few minutes to launch even if you happen to have an ASAT missile right on its flight path (which obviously the US would avoid anyway when they put it into orbit).
So, the USAF identifies a bunch of satellites they want to shoot down, then they put this thing into orbit which parks interceptors in polar orbits that will hit each of the targets. Then it re-enters and returns to base.
Another option is recon - this thing could be launched at any inclination to get to any point in the earth quickly and then be able to return to base more quickly with cross-range capability.
Those are just some wild guesses. Wings do give you options - no sense having them unless your mission demands them.
Really this just sounds like a fancier version of the SR-71/U-2 spyplane. Spy satellite are great things and can photograph pretty much anything given a long enough period of time; the problem is they're only going to be over the exact patch of dirt you're interested in perhaps once a week, and it might be cloudy (or night time!) when that happens.
Enter the spy plane. The U-2 and SR-71 (and A-12, but that was discontinued in the 60's) are designed to get "now" pics without having to wait. Call up Bobby Hill AFB in California or Hank Hill AFB in Virginia and in 8 hours you can get an up to date photograph of exactly what's going on anywhere in the world.
Now imagine you combine the two. The availability and speed of a spy plane, but the international benefit of staying out of of your enemy's airspace. Plus, due to the momentum it has, it stays in orbit for weeks, so after you buzz Moscow, you can do a course correction to your flying twinkie and hit up St. Petersburg, Beijing, Pyongyang, or Tehran to see where the weapons shipments are headed. Course corrections cost a lot of fuel for a satellite, which will be in orbit for years or decades, but course correction fuel on a reusable satellite that will only be up for a matter of weeks is cheap.
Also it's a lot harder to hit a new sattelite with an unknown and changing orbit. The chinese have proven that they can knock a U-2 flying at 90,000ft out of the air.
moox. for a new generation.
That seems like a stretch of capabilities considering that enemy satellites don't exactly have open, 'insert here,' interfaces on them where you could easily mount something like that. If the X-37 is going to be used for space militarization, I imagine it is much less about blowing things up and far more about interfacing with things on orbit. The X-37 has a decently sized cargo bay and a manipulator arm. It may well be capable of snagging certain classes of enemy satellites for reverse engineering. It also could probably be used for some sort of autonomous repair/maintenance of friendly satellites which is a field that is currently being researched significantly for both civilian and military purposes. Also, if the X-37 turns out to be fairly cheap and easy to reuse (like the space shuttle was supposed to be) it may become a good deployment mechanism for small scale recon sats in a hot environment. If it can sit on orbit for multiple weeks with a cargo bay full of five or so small orbital cameras, it could deploy those cameras when and where necessary to track enemy movement.
Then again, this is all just conjecture on my part. It may be something as simple as the air force wanting the ability fly up to a Chinese satellite and poke it inappropriately hard with the manipulator arm to break its camera or send it spinning uncontrollably out of its intended orbit.
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The reason the shuttle is strapped onto the side of its launch stack is because it carries its payload internally. There are only two justifications for the engineering difficulties and operational hazards of this design. One is to have the expensive SSMEs attached to a recoverable part of the vehicle. The other is to give the vehicle the ability to recover payloads from orbit (read: steal enemy spy satellites.) With the end of the shuttle program looming, I'm guessing the Air Force is interested in maintaining that capability. And who knows... maybe they'll be nice and bring back Hubble, too.