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SpaceX Will Launch Secretive X-37B Spaceplane's Next Mission (latimes.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: SpaceX will launch the Air Force's X-37B experimental spaceplane later this year, in the military's latest vote of confidence in the Elon Musk-led space company. This will be the first time SpaceX has launched the uncrewed robotic vehicle. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., has launched the spaceplane's previous four missions atop one of its Atlas V rockets. The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which is responsible for the X-37B's experimental operations, said it was "very excited" for the fifth flight, which will test how special electronics and heat pipes will fare during a long-duration space mission. The Air Force has two of the spaceplanes, which look like miniature versions of the space shuttle and are known officially as X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles. The first X-37B was launched in 2010.
Can't be too secretive, I just read an article about it.
More like "vote of cutting corners". Aka "you're cheaper, I'm insured, fire it up for all I care".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
mr Musk should leak all the details of the X37B cuz hes a computer person
The USA managed to build and launch an airliner sized crewed reusable spaceplane called the shuttle in the 1970s. I'd love to know whats so cutting edge about the X35 that they're trying to keep this midget version of the shuttle secret. Warp engines? Dilithium crystals? Or just too embarresed to show that space technology has barely advanced in 40 years?
Is a pagan rocket.
When they launched the spy satellite, it was the best launch coverage (streamed on youtube) to date, in my opinion. Rockets go up all the time, it is rockets coming back down which is unusual and special. Because of the payload, the coverage of that mission didn't look at stage II at all, so we got better coverage of the booster (stage I) return, including continuous launch-to-landing ground telescope images of the booster, plus continuous video from the booster. I have high hopes that this launch will be similar.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Do the drop the X designation?? Almost a decade if flight, I think it passed the test , and what would its new designator be ?
They're trying to steal the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
We've been told to do it, so we do it. Congresscritters are disgustingly cheap, and Musk has bought many of them.
There are many dangers: "any thing that goes up will go down" as bullets.
It will kill humans on the Earth,
Countries should moderate and control their satellites.
Kill yourself already and do the world a favorite. Just one bullet to your tiny brain should do the job.
The Space Craft is not a secret.
It's the cargo.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The shuttle was never used to its full capabilities.
Disagree. The problem with the shuttle was that it's capabilities weren't what they needed to be. Technically it was reusable but so much work and expense went into each refurbishment that they may as well have not bothered. The shuttle was supposed to reduce cost to orbit and it did nothing of the sort. The fact that it was capable of bringing items back from orbit is a minor detail which misses the big picture. The shuttle wasn't economically capable of solving the space junk problem which is really the only common reason to bring most items back from orbit aside from science experiments and astronauts. Once you make getting to orbit economical THEN it is worth worrying about bringing stuff back economically. The shuttle design was simply not capable of doing that economically.
Nothing in the AAP could have safely brought a satellite back from orbit as the shuttle managed on 4 occasions.
I said "along the lines of the AAP", as in something similar. It didn't have to be that program specifically. It's an example of a type of program that would have been more likely to succeed. It's all moot at this point and SpaceX (and some others) are finally making progress on the problems. It's just a shame we wasted so much time and money on the shuttle.
The shuttle could have stayed in orbit for months if it didn't have a crew.
So what? It would still have been outrageously expensive to launch, overly complicated, unreliable (two failures in just over 100 missions), required substantial refurbishment between missions, etc. There simply are better ways to solve the problems the shuttle was supposed to tackle. It was a design by committee that ultimately failed in its primary purpose which was to reduce cost to orbit and allow more rapid launches. This isn't to say it wasn't a capable vehicle but the economics of it were poor and it held us back for several decades.
And I don't see this thing taking a full crew + 22 ton payload anytime soon.
Presumably it wasn't designed to do that so why is that a problem?
What ever happened to his motto "Don't be evil"?
Oh, wait. That was some other guys. He never said that.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Shuttle was the omnitool that could do everything.
It could do a lot but it could not do anything cheaply. It was too complicated, too expensive, too unreliable, and unfocused. We got ahead of ourselves with the shuttle and turned a reasonable idea (reusable flight vehicle) into a jobs program which needlessly cost 14 astronauts their lives and held our space program back for three decades.