Boeing Will Make the Military's New Hypersonic Spaceplane (theverge.com)

The Department of Defense has selected Boeing to make a new hypersonic spaceplane that can be reused frequently over a short period of time to deliver multiple satellites into orbit. "DARPA, the agency that tests new advanced technologies for the military, has picked Boeing's design concept, called the Phantom Express, to move forward as part of the agency's Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program," reports The Verge. From the report: The goal of DARPA's XS-1 program is to create a spacecraft that's something of a hybrid between an airplane and a traditional vertical rocket. The spaceplane is meant to take off vertically and fly uncrewed to high altitudes above Earth. From there, the vehicle will release a mini-rocket -- a booster with an engine that can propel a satellite weighing up to 3,000 pounds into orbit. As the booster deploys the satellite, the spaceplane will then land back on Earth horizontally just like a normal airplane -- and then be fueled up for its next mission. DARPA wants the turnaround time between flights to last just a few hours. But perhaps the most audacious goal is the price DARPA wants for each flight. The agency is aiming for the spaceplane to cost $5 million per mission, a significant bargain considering most orbital rockets cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to launch. And Boeing says it's up to the task. "Phantom Express is designed to disrupt and transform the satellite launch process as we know it today, creating a new, on-demand space-launch capability that can be achieved more affordably and with less risk," Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works, said in a statement.

Comments

jajahaha

[fubarrr]

>spaceplane

Impossible

Re:jajahaha

[Max_W]

>spaceplane

Impossible

It does not matter, it does not influence the financial flow.

Re: jajahaha

[LifesABeach]

Between now and then, I'm reminded of the quote, "It'll do pig."

Re:jajahaha

[jimtheowl]

I'm not sure why so many comments are mocking this.

It is a similar delivery system rumored as possible using the Canadian Arrow (CF105) plane (likely a myth) but it benefits from not having a human passenger or pilot.

I'm sure cost overruns are on the venue and there might be mentions of "government waste", but from the looks of it, I'm betting that this will work as intended.

Re:jajahaha

[Gr8Apes]

Considering several competing designs existed back in the early to mid 80s (remember NASP?) and that the only thing keeping that from really going forward was a lack of sufficient jet / SCRAM technology to get the plane to super sonic speeds, it's quite highly possible.

3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[wisebabo]

So, would this be enough to get one person into orbit (including spacesuit)? Would it be enough to include some sort of heat shield/parachute?

I know this sounds crazy but a long long time ago I read that it might be possible to de-orbit a single astronaut be using a very large low density shield (high temperature rigid foam?!) and very gradually decelerate from orbital velocity shedding speed (and heat) slowly enough that it wouldn't incinerate the structure (or astronaut). I heard that NASA was investigating some sort of semi-inflatable shield (a ballute?) that might be the more evolved version. Anyway, would that give the astronaut at least a chance of making it past re-entry? (he would still need a parachute though).

Sounds like something that could be used by James Bond (or the American equivalent).

(By the way, I'm going to Australia soon, do they call australian astronauts, austronauts? Astronomers austronomers? :)

Vs Rockets?

[monkeyxpress]

I like the idea of these scramjet planes, but I struggle to see how they are going to be economical vs the sort of thing Musk/Bezos are planning with reusability (I understand this is for significantly smaller payloads). In the end, is it really that big a deal having to carry oxidiser for the first stage with you? As Musk keeps arguing, the fuel costs are not a big issue with rocket launches, and the size of your rocket isn't such an issue if you can reuse it enough times.

In contrast, the main problem I see with these scramjets is that the atmospheric conditions required to allow scramjet operation (speed and density) also produce massive heating and drag on the airframe. Presumably you must carry extra fuel to pay for the ability to collect oxidiser, and it would be interesting to see just how much of an improvement in fuelling costs these designs can achieve in the best case.

For spaceplanes to really come into their own I would have thought a single stage to orbit system would really be required. Reaction Engines seems to think this is possible, but I doubt it is coming anytime in the next decade. Still, great to see progress being made on new concepts.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't think this is supposed to have a scramjet at all. The idea is simply to have a suborbital airplane in the Mach 10-13 region or so (for which you don't need a scramjet) that would allow the payload to reach orbit with a lower-cost second stage while serving as a first stage that is more easily reusable (lands like a glider, only needs a single engine burn - less wear - , the engine design can be conservative due to lower requirements etc.), doesn't use anything unproven (and no complicated TPS thanks to the suborbital regime), and also doubles as a (reusable) payload fairing (the payload and the second stage are only ejected in vacuum). It's actually a brilliant concept that could quite easily scale into the ~20 tonne region, but the aircraft would be necessarily larger. Hence the smaller prototype.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[Dorianny]

The turnaround time for a plane is far less then for a reusable rocket. My speculation is that the Air force wants this technology in case of all out war with a nation with advanced rocket technology (Russia or China) that would target and wipe out large chunks of its satellite systems. There is little that can be done to protect satellites in orbit, my belief is that the air-force solution is to put them up faster then they can shoot them down. Some of the "satellites" can even be dummies for the simple purpose of depleting enemy anti-satellite ordinance

Re:Vs Rockets?

[phayes]

It's not a scramjet as it uses Shuttle derived AR-22 H2/LOX rocket engines.

The problem is that either there is something missing in the released info or the XS-1 will never be able to deliver the claimed performance. H2/LOX is a great upper stage combination but a very poor first stage as liquid H2 has so little density (1/12th the density of RP-1) that it needs massive (heavy) tanks. The Shuttle needed SRBs to get off the ground for the very same reason.

So where are the missing SRBs, where do they attach and how much is throwing them away every launch adding to the claimed $5 million per launch? *

* The Shuttle's claimed reusability of it's SRB's was a farce. The cost of refurbishing the SRBs was higher than just expending them would have been.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[Richard_at_work]

I have no idea how much it affects the figures, but remember that with *every* launch, the Shuttle was lifting a fuckton load of structure, whether or not that structure supported the payloads mission or not.

Of course I'm talking about the crew compartment and supporting systems. They weighed a *lot*. Add to that the payload bay, which itself was a significant structure.

Think about it this way - each payload bay door on the Shuttle weighed 3/4 of the weight of the payload that the XS-1 is intended to launch.

Get rid of the systems required to keep a crew alive, put the fuel in the payload bay area, and you can cut down the weight of the shuttle fairly dramatically - add to that the fact that you can get a *lot* of weight saving from use of modern materials (the Shuttle was traditional aluminium, you could easily drop a third of that weight by moving to composites).

Re:Vs Rockets?

[budgenator]

It's actually a brilliant concept that could quite easily scale into the ~20 tonne region, but the aircraft would be necessarily larger. Hence the smaller prototype.

I beg to differ, It's a blatant attempt to award a "make work" program to the good 'ol boys, because SpaceX is on the verge of handing United Launch Allience's ass to them. It's also not up to the "brilliant concept" level, it basically a first stage rocket boaster with wings and landing gear; you get all of the drag of wings, plus the mechanical complications of landing gear.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of physics, the fuel costs are everything with chemical rockets. It isn't dollars so much as mass. Some fuels are "can't get there from here" because the energy vs mass just won't allow certain actions. The energy from fuel vs mass is THE limiting factor with chemical rockets.

Any space plane that goes above the atmosphere is a waste. The wings serve no function in space. They are dead weight. A plan that has a plane in the atmospheric portion of the launch followed by a conventional rocket for the rest may make a great deal of sense. I suspect the guys at Boeing have given this some consideration.

I believe the impetus found in armchair rocketeers to have one craft do everything stems from seeing science fiction video where the protagonist has a cool ship that does everything.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But you see, that's not a contradiction. The overall concept can be simultaneously brilliant and handed off to "good ol' boys" to be executed poorly. Seeing as they now decided to use an AR hydrolox engine, it's apparently both. I didn't notice the engine choice in the previous news on this; either they made it recently or didn't bother to report on that.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, for a number of reasons, hydrogen is a bad choice for the spaceplane first stage. RP-1 or methane would be ideal. This is unfortunate. These programs tend to get worse over time, it seems.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I should also add the vertical launch: that's also not a good idea and one that I didn't notice in older articles either.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[DerekLyons]

The turnaround time for a plane is far less then for a reusable rocket.

True - but irrelevant, as (despite it's name) the XS-1 is a rocket, not a plane. All the things that make a rocket slower to turnaround (cryogenic systems, rocket engines) are present on the XS-1.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[phayes]

Losing the Shuttle's cargo bay & manned section won't help (enough) to bring their launch costs down to their announced costs of $5M/Launch. Delta IV uses H2/Lox as well, doesn't have wings that'll impose their own weight & drag penalties and yet it still needs 2-4 costly strap-on boosters for many payloads. They're claiming just $5M per launch, without recovering the second stage nor (as far as I have seen) the payload shroud. Hell, Space-X is now working on recovering their shrouds because they cost $1-2M.

It's clearly a better system than SLS and probably better costwise than AV & D4, it's just that I suspect they're vastly overselling what's achievable ($$$/launch) with it much like the Shuttle did in the 80s. They may need to oversell for for their continued existence, as had they announced costs globally equivalent with Space-X's current costs (what I suspect this is capable of) they'd be little point to developing it as we already _know_ that those costs are achievable with F9.

Who is paying the development costs? ULA? The USG?

Re:Vs Rockets?

[Richard_at_work]

I think people are looking too hard at the wrong things here to come up with issues.

Look at it this way - the Falcon 1, which admittedly was only planned for around 1,500lb to LEO (and never demonstrated anything above 500lb) was priced at just $8million for a full throwaway vehicle, so we are in the ball park certainly!

The Shuttle lifted 60,000lb to LEO.

The Delta IV lifts 20,000lb to LEO at the lowest end (and it doesnt need strap on boosters for this payload).

The Falcon 9 lifts 50,000lb to LEO (and doesn't need strap on boosters).

The XS-1 is planned to lift just 3,000lb. Which is tiny compared to the three above, and in the ball park for the Falcon 1. And we are a decade on from the Falcon 1...

My point about the Space Shuttles structure is that you can lose a *lot* of the Shuttle when you compare it to something like this - basically the only thing the Shuttle and the XS-1 has in common is that they both have wings and engines.

A second stage which lofts 3,000lb will cost nothing near a second stage which lofts 50,000lb to the same orbit. And it goes without saying that the shroud etc will also cost nothing near that on a Falcon 9, simply because of the difference in size here.

We already know from SpaceX costings that the fuel involved in a launch is a small proportion of the actual launch costs - the bulk of which to date has been the vehicle itself. A throw away second stage for a 3,000lb payload should be doable for $5million.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

A throw away second stage for a 3,000lb payload should be doable for $5million.

Chances are that a throw-away second stage for a 30,000lb payload could be doable for $5 million, at least in mass production. (At least Merlin 1D price should be quite a bit under $2 million these days...) Now mate it with a suitable winged first stage (I keep picturing a ramjet+rocket stage with horizontal takeoff from a rail - saves landing gear mass and oxygen mass) and you're all set!

Re:Vs Rockets?

[phayes]

OK, so it's a light launcher (thanks for calling me on that - i missed it).

That brings up a whole new set of remarks/questions though:
The XS-1 is seeking to be an actor in the light satellite market that Electron (for one) is targeting, that Space-X abandoned after a single Falcon-1 commercial launch & that BO won't even look at. It's true that there have been noises about sats being miniaturised and no longer having to be as big to have equivalent performance and that the more pertinent strangle point is being able to launch without having to wait 5 years to find a compatible ride to orbit as a secondary payload without it costing an inordinate amount of money. Thats something the XS-1 adresses quite clearly but the light sat market won't really exist until these inexpensive, "low latency" launchers starts lofting paying customers si it might not be as big a market as they hope.

It's interesting that Space-X & BO plan on going big to go reusable and cheaper while ULA is planning on going the opposite way.

I do get your point that there are so many things that are unneeded in XS-1 compared to SLS: XS-1 will be Unmanned so all the human baggage like life support, seats, Space toilets & the themselves astronauts are unneeded. No multi-ton Orbit-to earth payload recovery capability. The Flyback booster doesn't achieve orbit so there's 150000lb of "payload" that get lopped off and a _much_ lighter TPS is needed for a booster than to return from orbit. Etc...

I _do_ still question the use of shuttle derived H2/Lox engines for the first stage for much the same reasons I gave initially. As a reusable, RP-1 has issues with coking but Methane that both Space-X & BO have chosen for the future would have been a much better choice technically. The only reason for going with shuttle derived engines is that it keeps Rocketdyne in the market but on that path I also see the madness that affected SLS : Bloat and Pork.

If only ULA had used the $1B/year they were being handed by the USG to "preserve launch capability" to begin working on this 5 years ago.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[Richard_at_work]

That brings up a whole new set of remarks/questions though:
The XS-1 is seeking to be an actor in the light satellite market that Electron (for one) is targeting, that Space-X abandoned after a single Falcon-1 commercial launch & that BO won't even look at. It's true that there have been noises about sats being miniaturised and no longer having to be as big to have equivalent performance and that the more pertinent strangle point is being able to launch without having to wait 5 years to find a compatible ride to orbit as a secondary payload without it costing an inordinate amount of money. Thats something the XS-1 adresses quite clearly but the light sat market won't really exist until these inexpensive, "low latency" launchers starts lofting paying customers si it might not be as big a market as they hope.

You are assuming that the XS-1 will be launching commercial payloads - its a DoD DARPA contract, this is going to be a military system, hence no need to wait for a light sat market that may not develop. Its going to be launching military satellites - probably short term communications or ELINT platforms, or even weapons.

SpaceX dropped the Falcon 1 because they got the NASA CRS contract, and the Falcon 1 couldn't do that - they also dropped the Falcon 5 for the same reason, and simply concentrated on the Falcon 9 as their bread and butter lifter for the time being.

Blue Origin aren't looking at *anything* right now, they can be included in these discussions once they orbit something, *anything* :)

But the XS-1 ... its military, and therefor doesn't need a market.

Re:Vs Rockets?

[phayes]

So XS-1 is the flip side of the X-37, instead of a reusable payload, it's a reusable booster for light launches but it'll never be built in quantity and thus the dangled $5M/launch will in all probability never happen because it presupposes a rapid & regular launch regime. It'll have the occasional operational launch but will spend most of it's time as an expensive hangar queen, to be used to repopulate the USG's stable of Sats in case an adversary starts taking them out.

They could have said so...

Cheers

Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours?

[petes_PoV]

new hypersonic spaceplane that can be reused frequently over a short period of time to deliver multiple satellites into orbit.

Is the description of this craft's operation supposed to be a euphemism?

When the military talks about "delivery" they usually mean weapons: bombs. And the simplest explanation of why they would need to deliver many "satellites" with a turn around of a few hours would be if those "satellites" were disposable. Is this development really just a space-based weapon system? One that uses orbital (or sub-orbital) platforms to bomb targets from space.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-orbital weapons could dispose of satellites whether they are meant to be disposable or not. The maximum payload is an order of magnitude lighter than that of a B-2, so I don't think it's meant to be used as a strategic bomber.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If you could deliver a tonne and a half of payload into orbit for a few million dollars, you'd attract quite a lot of non-bombing customers.

Re:3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[twosat]

Sounds like you read about the General Electric MOOSE and the Douglas Paracone.

http://www.astronautix.com/m/m...

http://www.astronautix.com/p/p...

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[geekmux]

If you could deliver a tonne and a half of payload into orbit for a few million dollars, you'd attract quite a lot of non-bombing customers.

And making that cheaper is somehow a good thing? Exactly how many tonnes of shit do we expect to be able to put up in orbit before the inevitable happens?

We humans haven't exactly done a good job at keeping Earth tidy, neat, and organized. Turning our orbit at any level into a giant clusterfuck of garbage flying around at high speed isn't exactly the wisest plan if we would like to continue to navigate through it safely with spacecraft.

Re:3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[twosat]

Oops, replying to my own post, a quick search found a more-detailed article on Wikipedia about MOOSE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[oobayly]

Rods from the Gods delivery system? I wonder what the delta-v requirements would be to get a payload into a highly elliptical orbit (so you get lots of re-entry velocity) with a negative altitude perigee. You'd probably save a lot of fuel by not circularising your orbit (and then needing more to drop the perigee down again. Might have to boot up KSP...

Cost?

[ytene]

Sorry to be cynical, but reading news on contracts like this it seems that the one group getting the worst deal are the American Tax-Payers.

The article doesn't say, but does anyone know if this is a fixed-price-bid or a "Cost-Plus" contract?

The differences could be absolutely huge. You only need to compare the cost-per-kilo-to-orbit of the various solutions being developed today (Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, SLS) to see how hugely expensive the government-funded solutions are in comparison with commercial enterprises.

I'm not for one moment suggesting that the new platform is a waste of money, just that it's value for money may have a huge dependency on the way that the contract is written.

Star Wars II

[feargal]

I, for one, welcome our new suborbital rocket-launcher platforms.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[AHuxley]

The rest of the world has mapped out every US spy and mil communications platform.
They know the hours when the US is looking down.
The US tried to make its spy sats really hard to see but they still get detected by people and nations.
Projects like this allow the US to add a lot more look down hardware if needed. New orbit times that will not allow other nations to predict or hide in time.
The other fear of the US mil is emerging anti-satellite weapon systems removing a few of its very advance systems. That gap will be quickly filled by a lot of new launches.
The US will flood space with its small sats and the enemy will run out of anti-satellite weapon systems.

Re:More Spacejunk, who is gonna clean up the mess

[MightyYar]

Sure, right after we filter all the plastic out of the oceans.

Re:3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[MightyYar]

Even 1960s tech could get a man into orbit with a 3000lbs. That's about the size of the biggest Mercury capsules.

Phantom Express is the wrong name.

[ausekilis]

Good news, everyone! Boeing is making the first prototype for our delivery service of the future.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[MightyYar]

And making that cheaper is somehow a good thing?

Yes.

We humans haven't exactly done a good job at keeping Earth tidy, neat, and organized.

Actually, we seem to follow a pattern of letting shit get out of hand and then correcting. Western Europe and the US have improved their environments significantly over the last 50 years. China is just beginning to figure this out as well.

Unfortunate Acronym

[necro81]

What dolt at DARPA - an organization filled with pretty savvy people - came up with the acronym "XS-1"? Just say it out loud: "excess one". It just screams of government waste, no matter the merits.

I guess it could have been worse - the program's expanded name is "experimental spaceplane." If they had made spaceplane two words instead of one, the program could have been called "XSP", or "excess pee".

Re:Unfortunate Acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the US aircraft designation system.

X = Experimental
S = Space plane vehicle type
1 = Designation number

Just to to give you an idea:

*YF-16: Prototype Fighter 16, what the F16 Fighting Falcon was desginated before being selected as the Light Weight Fighter program winner.
*X-1, experimental plane 1. First aircraft designed to go super sonic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense_Aerospace_Vehicle_Designations

As Wikipedia notes: Spaceplane. A spaceplane is a vehicle designed to fly beyond earth's atmosphere and return. This vehicle code was poorly chosen, as it conflicts with the mission code S (Anti-Submarine Warfare). "ES" could equally designate a spaceplane designed specifically for electronic warfare or an anti-submarine plane modified for that purpose.

Using Boeing=Definition of Insanity

[schwit1]

This is Boeing's next government trough after the boondoggled SLS and the new AF tanker program.

Re:3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[necro81]

A Mercury capsule was about 3000 lbs. (google search) So, yes, it could.

And in Australia they call those people that fly into space "arse-tronauts".

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[geekmux]

And making that cheaper is somehow a good thing?

Yes.

We humans haven't exactly done a good job at keeping Earth tidy, neat, and organized.

Actually, we seem to follow a pattern of letting shit get out of hand and then correcting. Western Europe and the US have improved their environments significantly over the last 50 years. China is just beginning to figure this out as well.

Uh, letting shit "get out of hand" in orbit would likely result in the modern world being thrown back into the proverbial stone age. Gonna be hard to "correct" it all after satellites play ping pong and destroy each other, and we've created an artificial ring of space junk around our planet.

GPS is used as the key timing source for high-speed communications. Hell, forget comm links, the younger generation doesn't even know what a paper map is in order to navigate on this planet, and they couldn't survive without the internet/social media.

Slightly OT but maybe someone here knows

[sootman]

Why am I seeing ads on TV telling me how great Northrop Grumman is? As much as I'd like to have my own B2 they're a little pricey and hard to park.

Backwards Space Shuttle

[jfdavis668]

Instead of the boosters putting the shuttle into space, the shuttle is now putting the booster into space. Quite an advancement.

Re:Backwards Space Shuttle

[mentil]

Perhaps it's Russian tech.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[MightyYar]

Gonna be hard to "correct" it all after satellites play ping pong and destroy each other, and we've created an artificial ring of space junk around our planet.

Also going to be hard to clean all that up without cheap access to space.

Bait and switch back to the "old boys club"

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

At first, Boeing was partnering with Blue Origin on the engine. However, once they actually got this contract, they drop BO and switch over to Aerojet Rocketdyne; AR used to be called Boeing Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power before being spun off, merged, etc a few times. To me, this seems like a step backwards going back to the space plane idea; landing "normal rockets" has been proven now by two separate companies. It will be interesting to see if they can actually fulfill Phase III, 10 flights in 10 days.

Re: More Spacejunk, who is gonna clean up the mess

[cyberchondriac]

That would make it 1,000 times worse.

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[currently_awake]

Space debris is a solvable problem: it mostly sticks to predictable orbits where you can navigate around it, and we have several ideas for de-orbiting the junk. Using a laser from the ground to ablate it (on the side facing its direction of travel) would impart de-orbiting acceleration and cause it to drop into the atmosphere.

Re: More Spacejunk, who is gonna clean up the mess

[LifesABeach]

I can see the military applications scaring everyone half to death. Until a $500M is taken out by debris from a spent booster. The best way to shut everyone up is to put a low power laser in ISS and have every space interested country send someone up there to man it and start the process of pushing all that junk into a re-entry orbit. I figure after about 3 weeks up there and all you do is "point and shot," ones concerns about lasers in space will be greatly diminished. I then figure that after about 8 weeks of "point and shot" it will be time to come home; and let someone else do it.

Re:3,000 lbs. to orbit? Enough for one person?

[fahrbot-bot]

And in Australia they call those people that fly into space "arse-tronauts".

Not too many Australian astronauts. In space, no one can hear you cheer.

Spaceplane?

[John.Banister]

"Spaceplane" sounds like something piloted by a clean-limbed patriot in 1950s science fiction. This is a exospheric military drone.

Re: More Spacejunk, who is gonna clean up the mess

[Type44Q]

Far be it for me to be fucking obvious but cleaning up orbits might just require cheaper access to space...

Re:Delivery of multiple "payloads" every few hours

[geekmux]

I feel like you may not grasp how empty and vast space, even at the low altitude of satellites, is, and how comparably small satellites are.

I feel you may not grasp mans ability to trash any place it inhabits, no matter how "vast".

I also feel you do not grasp the impact of our satellite network being inadvertently destroyed. Ironically, those in the stone age were more prepared for survival.

Just like Nukes

[Residentcur]

The problem here is similar to that for fission power plants: clean-up. Until we can clear the LEO clutter so that the current occupancy can be managed, it's arguably not a great idea to fill the space with even more small systems.

does not make me feel safe

[micahraleigh]

We're going to eject tax money hypersonically into space is all this means ...

What is a space plane going to stop from hitting us?