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After a Year In Orbit, US Air Force's X37-B Will Conclude Its Secret Mission
SomePgmr writes "The U.S Air Force's highly secret unmanned space plane will land in June — ending a year-long mission in orbit. The experimental Boeing X37-B has been circling Earth at 17,000 miles per hour and was due to land in California in December. It is now expected to land in mid to late June. And still, no one knows what the space drone has been doing up there all this time."
...I'm guessing most here will believe that its mission was one of unmitigated evil.
It's probably designed to shred the Constitution — from space!
Not even the people who launched it?
Considering the huge number of satellites and space debris, I'm going to say that it was just stuck in traffic all year. Space rush hour really sucks!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Skynet knows.
In other news, Aristotle is suing you for infringing his intellectural property rights on fictional physics. Maintaining speed relative to another object does not, generally, require any continuous supply of additional energy. Free fall elliptical orbits are one example.
How secret can it be if we know it happened? What we really have to worry/consider are the things that we never even know happen, not just "don't know their purpose."
If the general community know that this 'secret' spaceplane was up there doing stuff, then you can guarantee that it wasn't doing anything sensitive, though possibly classified. When they do really important and secret things, you can guarantee that we never even know it happened at all.
Funny comment in the article: "At launch, the space plane was accompanied by staff in biohazard suits, leading to speculation that there were radioactive components on board."
I'd wear protective suits if it is fueled with hypergolic propellant since it's extremely toxic, so the comment about radioactive components is just bs IMHO.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
17,000 miles per hour, I guess that's something like 30,000 km/h? That seems pretty fast to me. How much fuel did that consume, and how did they provide it with fuel for a whole year?
Travelling through orbital space ain't like dusting crops, boy! It doesn't take any fuel at all. Look at the Moon, for example. It's been in orbit an awfully long time, but how long has it been since it was fuelled up?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Not even the air force, or DARPA, or the NSA.
Government Spokesperson:
"It just kinda launched itself and seemed to be having a good time up there so we let it be."
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
It consumed roughtly 737,400lbs of fuel, minus the weight of the Atlas V rocket (so 500,000 lbs of fuel?) to get it in orbit. To orbit the earth at an altitude above the non-negligible atmosphere, you need to travel at around 17,000mph or more. This is roughly the same speed the Shuttle, ISS, Dragon capsule, Hubble, et all are moving. The rocket puts it in orbit at that speed. I think once in orbit, about 6 months in to it's mission, it did an orbital course correction, which if done at the correct time, requires surprisingly little fuel to do.
moox. for a new generation.
nah, the geiger counter is no indication of radioactive material / nukes on board. You see, it turns out, most of the visible objects in outer space are actually humongous balls of radiation-emiting nuclear plasma. spacecraft are routinely dusted by bits of nuclear material. it's also possible (at least theoretically) for atoms bombarded by radiation to transmute into radioactive isotopes themselves. it's probably a good idea to wear a hazmat suit when approaching any spacecraft recently returned from long periods away from atmoshperic shielding.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Setting a new government verified standard for "on-time" arrivals. After this benchmark; was due to land in California in December. It is now expected to land in mid to late June -- how can anyone complain about being a few hours late!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Nukes in space has been possible for 50 years. We don't do it because there are treaties against it, treaties that have remarkably been followed by all involved. It's not a a boat that anyone involved really wants to start rocking.
It's not so much that there has been any great restraint on the part of the nuclear armed space powers as that there is no point to having them in orbit. ICBMs get anywhere in the world in 30 minutes, SLBMs are even quicker since they are closer. Silos are very well hardened and subs are hard to find- orbiting satellites have limited maneuverability, so you always know where the warhead is. A good chunk of the time orbital dynamics is going to say you're out of position to even hit your desired target. Plus, stuff in space can't be maintained easily and warheads need occasional maintenance to do things like replace the tritium boosters and check the electronics.
It's basically just not necessary
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Do not taunt happy fun shuttle.
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The hazmat suites are for hydrazine. Nasty stuff.
If you've ever watched a Shuttle landing to the point where they're letting the crew out, the first people to arrive are the fire trucks, then folks in Hazmat suites to make sure that there is no unreacted hydrazine (from the Reaction Control System) leaking around. It's very, very volatile. The XB-37 Wikipedia article describes shifting the main engine off the hydrogen perioxide (which at the concentrations used is pretty nasty stuff in and of itself) but they may still have hydrazine for the control thrusters.
Besides, they look cool and let you know that the Air Force means business.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
One thing that has been desirable has been to keep surveillance drones in flight for as long as possible. The longest shuttle mission was 17 days and 15 hours. This drone has been up there for a year before coming down.
Yeah, because it was essentially a satellite in orbit around the earth. We already have spy satellites, and have had them for a lot longer than we have had drones.
The reason why we're using a lot of drones now, despite already having satellites, is because the drones can maintain a lengthy continuous presence over a specific location, rather than passing over that location at regular intervals in an orbit which can be discovered and then worked around. In terms of amount of time continuously observing an area of interest, this space plane has vastly lower numbers than any UAV -- just like all spy satellites.
If you are picturing this being used for surveillance, then what they showed is not a drone with an extremely long loiter time. It's a satellite with an extremely short orbital life span.
I think they're aiming to replace spy satellites with these drones and this was a test to see if a drone can stay up in space for a long duration and still arrive back on ground intact for repairs or to upgrade its system.
If the military has upgraded equipment they want to put in a spy satellite, they just launch a new one. They have no need to recover old ones (unlike back in the day when spy satellites used film), so they just let the old one deorbit.
To figure out what the X37 is for, we need to figure out why the military would need it back. Spy satellite doesn't fit the bill at all.
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