US 'Space Warplane' Spying On Chinese Spacelab

PolygamousRanchKid sends this excerpt from El Reg: "The U.S. Air Force's second mysterious mini-space shuttle, the X-37B, could be spying on China's space laboratory and the first piece of its space station, Tiangong-1. Amateur space trackers told the British Interplanetary Society publication Spaceflight that the black-funded spaceplane seemed to be orbiting the Earth in tandem with Tiangong-1, or the Heavenly Palace, leading the magazine to speculate that its unknown mission is to spy on [the lab]. ... The lab is unmanned for the moment, so all there'd be to study is the technology of the craft and what experiments it's doing. Still, the U.S. is hugely suspicious of China's space endeavors, so it's more than possible that they'd want to get a look at Tiangong-1 just in case it's doing anything unexpected." Update: 01/06 21:50 GMT by S : Further calculations have shown that this is not the case after all.

Comments

Nobody has looked at the orbits very well

[Anonymous Coward]

Not going to get into too many details, but if you look at the orbits of the objects, they are not in the correct positions for OTV to get a good look at Tiangong. Why not get into details? Because the folks that understand this already know. And the people that don't understand what an RAAN is will probably just continue to believe these stories.

Re:Makes sense... space is the ultimate high groun

[powerlord]

I agree with what you say somewhat but one nuclear space weapon would take the whole thing out. So it doesn't seem like a threat to us, but hey the Chinese need to get ready to police the world now that we no longer can due to corporate welfare. Let them waste some time and money doing that AFAIC.

If you think the Chinese mentality is to Police the world, then I'm afraid you are in for a rude awakening.

Conquer (militarily, culturally, monetarily), is more in line with the predominant cultural beliefs than police.

Re:Makes sense... space is the ultimate high groun

[ScentCone]

Umm, isn't that exactly what the USA has done since WW2?

Funny you should ask. "No" would be the correct answer to that question.

But I'll check with our colonies in what used to be Germany and Japan, just to be sure. Our viceroy in South Korea or our Puppet Leaders in eastern Europe may also have some comments, of course. Oh, righ, none of that's actually the case.

You're confusing "the USA" with "everyone who didn't want to live under totalitarian regimes."