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DARPA Launches Military Spaceplane Project
RocketAcademy writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a new program to develop a reusable first-stage launch vehicle. Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) would be capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, with a small ground crew, reaching speeds of Mach 10, and deploying a small upper stage to place a 3,000-pound satellite into orbit. The XS-1 program is complementary to the Air Force's Boeing X-37, which is a reusable upper stage. The X-37 is currently launched by an expendable Atlas rocket but could be launched by a vehicle derived from XS-1 in the future. Military planners have dreamed of a two-stage, fully reusable Military Spaceplane for several years, but funding has not materialized up to now."
...let me be the first to say: oh shit!!!
Aside from the obvious screaming lunacy of militarizing even Earth orbit, I have to wonder what the hell the "leaders" of this new Amerikan Union are trying to accomplish with this. Surely if they were responding to a threat, they wouldn't be announcing it for the whole planet to know. They want the whole planet to go "fuck, I'm scared of those Americans".
Well, I am. The USSA is terrifying at this point. But that's not going to make people think, "ooh we better be nice to the Americans so they don't kick our asses" - what they're going to be thinking will be more along the lines of "the Americans are dooming us all, we must do something to stop them".
Which, come to think of it, might be exactly what they want: a war that they didn't start.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS