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Air Force Sends Mystery Mini-Shuttle Back To Space
dsinc sends this quote from an AP report about the U.S. Air Force's X-37B spaceplane:
"The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday hidden on top of an Atlas V rocket. It's the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. It circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit. These high-tech mystery machines — 29 feet long — are about one-quarter the size of NASA's old space shuttles and can land automatically on a runway. The two previous touchdowns occurred in Southern California; this one might end on NASA's three-mile-long runway once reserved for the space agency's shuttles. The military isn't saying much, if anything, about this new secret mission. In fact, launch commentary ended 17 minutes into the flight. But one scientific observer, Harvard University's Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed for future satellites."
The space shuttle was largely a new craft at every launch too: the fuel tank was new, the engines were rebuilt, tiles were replaced, boosters were remanufactured (and completely new every few flights)
I think it was the shuttle (might have been the Saturn V) that had around 4000 parts fail every flight.
no the worst features of the shuttle was putting the main engines on the the shuttle instead of on a primary booster like the Buran.
That created a lot of complicated parts that took way to much time to maintain between launches. All three main engines in each shuttle required a complete disassembly between launches. Not to mention the weight.
The Buran flew like the x-37 flies now. pushed up by something else and then using thrusters in orbit.
Indeed the X-37 is being studied by boeing for a 200% scale version for manned version as flying down from orbit is safer than parachute landing.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Conspiracy or no, the Air Force did what NASA could not: demonstrate a PRACTICAL, reusable space plane.
NASA had a "designed by committee" project that threw in everything including redundant kitchen sinks and ended up with a bloated whale of a project that was highly impractical and utterly a failure at what it was intended to do: reduce costs. Instead what we got was something designed by committees
The Shuttle was a MANNED vehicle while the USAF's is NOT manned. Having a crew requires significant amount of equipment and weight to provide the minimum of life support (power, air, light, cooling, food, waste processing etc) which is not required by the USAF's unmanned drone. Further, it's been a couple of decades since the shuttle was designed and technology has advanced, getting smaller, lighter, and less power hungry. I am not surprised that an unmanned vehicle is smaller, cheaper, and more mission capable all things being equal. But they are not equal..
Comparing the current state of the art and complaining that what we fielded 30 years ago was a waste is not valid. Yes, the Shuttle did not meet the cost per launch targets, but I don't think the shuttle program was a total waste of time or money because of that. And the USAF's unnamed drone is 30 years more advanced in technology which was partially developed through what we learned though the shuttle program.
If anything surprises me is that it took so long for the USAF to figure out they needed a reusable platform of their own, but even that is understandable when you remember they used the shuttle for some classified work when it was available. This is just the natural progression of things.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
no the worst features of the shuttle was putting the main engines on the the shuttle instead of on a primary booster
The worst feature of the shuttle was trying to make it carry both people and cargo. That is like trying to make an airplane do the job of both a F-16 and a C-130. It is not going to do either very well. We should have designed a cheap unmanned heavy lift vehicle that was 99% reliable, and a much smaller "space-plane" to carry people that was 99.99% reliable. Instead we built a really expensive manned heavy lift vehicle that was ~98% reliable (135 launches, 2 failures).