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It's Baaack! XB-37B Finally Lands
ColdWetDog writes "The US Air Force / DARPA 'baby shuttle,' the Boeing-built XB-37B has just landed after 469 days in orbit. No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days other than 'because we could.' I, for one, welcome our long duration, unmanned orbital overlords."
After all, you pay for it, you dimwit
Same day the Chinese launch their most ambitious manned mission thusfar? Mmmkay.
Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese space launch. It would provide a good evaluation of what Chinese missiles can do.
Or, they brought it down because the Chinese thought they might swing by to look at the XB-37B while they were up there.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
uhh, you do realize that unmanned generally means that it doesn't havel ife support systems. We can get shit to the space station; we demonstrated that with the dragon capsule. However, we still don't have a way to get a man in space.
Lets face it, it's just too expensive to keep puny humans alive in orbit, the advent of highly advanced space faring robotics will see the end of long endurance human spaceflight.
Allow me to assure you that the United States military does not have any manned spaceflight capability. At all. Whatsoever. Period. The end. So you'll stop asking about it if you know what's good for you. In addition rumors of a secret base in the asteroid belt are simply that. Wild, baseless rumors. Nothing to see here citizen. Move along.
You've been watching too much Firefly.
"No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days"
No official explanation, but anonymous sources on the inside report that spacecraft's internal clock was off by 199 days. Aliens could not have been reached for comments.
Ezekiel 23:20
https://xkcd.com/695/
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Since one of the supposed roles of the XB-37B is repositioning satellites I would have to assume that it has the ability to change it's own orbit.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
We should start a kickstarter to bribe the chinese to plant a chinese flag where ours was, just so congress will get all fired up and get our space program going again.
We could cryogenically freeze the astronauts and send them up as popsicles.
CORBIN...DALLAS!!!!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
No. "Taikonaut" is a term some western media outlet came up with to sound cool. The Chinese government themselves refer to them as "astronauts" in their own English press releases.
No quite, it actually moves the earth with special space warping technology. If that's not true, why hasn't the Air Force denied it?
rewriting history since 2109
Although it's been proposed many times, nobody has ever put up a small, reusable manned spacecraft. The USAF had the DynaSoar program in the 1960s, but that was cancelled. Virgin Galactic is making noises about a small orbital spaceplane. Nothing like that has ever flown, but there's no fundamental obstacle.
The near future of earth orbit space may be Space-X's Falcon Heavy for freight, something from Virgin Galactic for humans, and robotic vehicles for military tasks.
In a pinch maybe yes ... but this is 1/2 size unmanned version of the non-yet-existent X-37C that was designed to fit in the cargo bay of the Shuttle
You know, like a 1/2 size version of bicycle designed to fit in your car's trunk might get you to work in a pinch ... not ideal and not even practical, but theoretically possible.
In other words, they now know how the presidential elections will turn out.
Lemme guess, the Goldman-Sachs candidate is going to win?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
To bring to its homeworld.
That was a sad day for kerbals everywhere.
No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days other than 'because we could.'
DARPA needed the extra time to ensure that the XB-37B would not get fooled by the Iranians' GPS spoofing.
damn blurry monitor ...
Not unless it had a big honking fuel tank that nobody saw. Changing orbit takes a huge amount of energy.
Could have been "out of gas"...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Wait, we went to the moon? I thought that was a hoax. (waits to duck flying beer cans)
Can 2 candidates win at the same time?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
You do realize that nothing is so crazy that no one on that internet will believe it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why would they need anymore reason than 'because we could'? Of all places, Slashdot should be full of people who would understand...
I think it's a lot simpler than that. Stuff in space that can do stuff is rare and expensive so you don't remove it when it's up there. If it doesn't "have to" come down, it won't until the reasons to land exceed the reasons not to. Experimental devices often are used for actual useful work while being tested if they're tested long enough anyway.
Oh, you're overstating Jebediah toughness. Sometimes he wasn't grinning, but when Jebediah wasn't smiling you knew you were in some deep sh*t...
..all the things the gobbermint tells you. Even if gobbermint talks to you in the name of NASA.
..take some press releases metaphorically. If you can't decipher the metaphorical message, forget it. By default, forget gobbermint propaganda immediately. Helps a lot.
The "crashed" drone looked quite perfect. How do you explain this, and how do you actually know ? Because you are in the All American Rah Rah Club ?
"military P code is encrypted and the US protects it heavily" As a crypto-nazi comment, there is only proper crypto and your-sister-cannot-break crypto. "heavily" is a stupid word next to "encrypted". Also, I recall people stating that only the "precision bits" are encoded, but the "coarse" bits are in the plain. Also, all of it does not seem to be crypto-checksummed. Can someone explain ?
Yes, but does it run Linux? [ducks]
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
That's why the underside of the drone was completely concealed with banners, and why BOTH wings had clearly been reattached?
Your definition of "quite perfect" must be quite different from mine. Your reply also doesn't address why drone flights had gone on for three years prior and continued uninterrupted if Iran had such a capability. I guess they downed it with their UFO technology!