Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Radar Operator: Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.
Colonel: What is it, son?
Radar Operator: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant...
Jet Pilot: Dick. Dick, take a look out of starboard.
Co-Pilot: Oh my God, it looks like a huge...
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker.
Bird-Watching Man: [raising binoculars] Ooh, Where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Over there. What sort of bird is that? Wait, it's not a woodpecker, it looks like someone's...
Army Sergeant: Privates. We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with...
Baseball Umpire: Two balls.
[looking up from game]
Baseball Umpire: What is that. It looks just like an enormous...
Chinese Teacher: Wang. pay attention.
Wang: I was distracted by that giant flying...
Musician: Willie.
Willie: Yeah?
Musician: What's that?
Willie: [squints] Well, that looks like a huge...
Colonel: Johnson.
Radar Operator: Yes, sir?
Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.
That was a joke. Haha. Fat chance.
That's relevant to the things that electronics can test for. (A very small subset of the things that are tested/inspected on and SSME.) Not to mention that if such things were truly practical (electronics substituting for inspection and/or teardown), commercial aviation would be using it for jet engines.
Not to mention that they haven't removed the engines after every flight for over fifteen years, and haven't rebuilt them every time they're removed for over a decade.
This vehicle's (single flight) test data is roughly meaningless compared to the thirty years of flight experience for the Shuttle itself. Seriously, the Shuttle's problems don't stem from lack of CAD. CAD is just a fancy version of Microsoft Paint - you still need the engineering information behind the design. Without that information it doesn't matter if you use chisels on stone tablets or the latest engineering workstation.
There lies the key problem with the Shuttle, lack of funding, lack of basic technology research, lack of engineering development, and a healthy helping of excess ambition on the part of NASA and successive Congresses and Administrations. The Shuttle went wrong when those three collectively decided not to expand on the groundwork laid by the X-15 and the various lifting body projects in favor of Buck Rogers stunts.
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.
One that wasn't an orbital craft, and one that never flew at all. So, no, they aren't first generation craft in any useful sense.
Ok, so what? The shuttle goes fast and far, doesn't mean there cannot be a reusable orbital craft. Not to mention that 99.99999% of the 'far' is spent in almost no stress drifting around. It's nearly meaningless, even though it sounds impressive to the uneducated.
First off, while the article is a good one, it was actually written before launch. After the launch, there have been some intriguing details, particularly the fact that NOBODY outside of the classified world has been able to actually locate it in the sky. Normally amateur skywatchers are pretty good at locating satellites after they've launched, but apparently not in this case. Here's two possible explanations for this:
* the X-37B is testing low-visibility features, possibly either a stealthy payload shroud, low-visibility solar panels, or some other sort of camouflage/stealth system
* One possibility posited by Jim Oberg (the article author) elsewhere is that this may be the first test ever of an atmospheric orbital plane change, a technique desired since the 90s or earlier, where a spaceplane uses its wings to dip into the atmosphere while travelling at hypersonic speeds to alter its trajectory. The X-37B apparently doesn't have a high enough L/D ratio to perform an extreme plane change (e.g. near-equatorial to polar), but it may be able to alter its trajectory enough to make it damn hard to track from the ground.
Now, some people have been asking why a reusable spaceplane would be useful to the US Air Force. Some possibilities:
* The atmospheric plane change capability mentioned above, which would allow the Air Force to deploy satellites into trajectories unknown by those observed. One major problem with satellites is that other countries typically know when they'll be overhead, so they just make sure that anything they're trying to hide doesn't occur during those hours.
* If you add a retrieval arm or some other docking interface, you can potentially use the craft to alter the trajectory of existing satellites
* Although the X-37B was launched on an expendable Atlas V rocket, the Air Force recently put out a solicitation for proposals for a first-stage Reusable Booster System utilizing a technique known as boost-back. With boost-back, after the booster boosts the payload and/or 2nd stage, it then does a 180 and boosts/glides back to a landing strip so that it can be easily reused. Lockheed Martin tested a secretive prototype of such a system (which they dubbed "Revolver") a couple years ago. If you combine such Reusable Boosters with a beefier successor to the X-37B, you have a rapid-launch reusable "surge" capability long desired by the Air Force. Such a surge capability could be useful when you need to quickly launch many satellites, such as when you need to deploy many satellites over a particular region in wartime or many of your satellites are knocked out by anti-satellite weapons or solar storms. Currently the Air Force has to wait for several weeks or months per satellite.
For anybody interested in watching video of the launch (a rather beautiful launch of the Atlas V rocket), you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdCpuv9RCwE
Also, for those who are interested in finding out more, there's a lot of good discussion with plenty of current and former space professionals (including some posts by Jim Oberg, the author of the submission article) over at this NASASpaceFlight.com thread on the X-37B: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=21122.285