Air Force Spaceplane Readying For Launch 94
FleaPlus writes "The US Air Force is currently preparing for the launch of the secretive X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) spaceplane, which was transferred from NASA to DARPA back in 2004 when NASA opted to focus its budget on lunar exploration. The reusable unmanned spaceplane is set to launch in April on top of a commercial Atlas V rocket, orbit for up to 270 days while testing a number of new technologies, reenter the atmosphere, then land on auto-pilot in California."
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Wings on a space cargo mover add a lot of unnecessary weight that people should have concluded is more detrimental than useful. The space industry has ways to launch objects without big, heavy wings and even without a crew.
Oh, they've got plenty of ways to launch stuff without those big ole wings.
Amusingly, you're missing that the only possible use for wings on a re-entry vehicle is military...
The shuttle had them for two military reasons. The USAF kicked in a bunch of cash, or at least promised to, in exchange for:
1) Massive LANDING capacity. Grab that low earth orbit USSR spy satellite and examine it at your leisure. The USSR response is of course high earth orbit, making them less effective, and wasting satellite mass on things like self destruct systems. Much like nuclear weapons, the plan was never to actually use it, but to manipulate the other side's behavior... Why the USAR wanted the USSR out of low earth orbit in the 70s is a mystery to me. Maybe discourage orbital bombardment or space based ground attack lasers or something.
2) Abort once around and very strange orbit and reentry profiles. So you launch, do whatever cloak and dagger stuff you want, then you want to immediately land, like "NOW". Meanwhile the earth rotates underneath you. So put big old wings on to glide. So what if the L/D ratio averages only 3:1 if you start 200 miles up, that's 600 miles crossrange. Since the shuttle program promised everything to everyone, I'm sure a shuttle-class runway is accessible every 1200 miles or so, at least with a lot of imagination and creative hot-dog piloting. Also, if the Bulgarians threaten to shoot down any military overflight spacecraft, you can simply pick a bizarre orbit to avoid them, with a bizarre reentry requiring some gliding around. The ability to land anywhere at any time somewhat limits their ability to screw around with us, including watching our vehicles with their telescopes. Extra glide range adds a lot of capability to military flight plans. Civilians, of course, would simply wait and deorbit at a better time/place, but the military "needs" more capability.
Re:Nice but nowhere near enough (Score:5, Informative)
You are thinking the X-33, and it was designed to be a scale model of the eventual craft, Venture Star.
Aerospike is just one approach, the one favored by one of the major rocket engine producers, Rocketdyne. Fundimentally, it works as an inverted rocket bell, using the outside air to contain the thrust. It is 90% as efficient as a traditional engine optimized for a particular section of the atmosphere, with the advantage that it keeps the same performance all throughout the atmospheric run.
The other major rocket engine producer, Aerojet, instead is pushing forward a rocket "afterburner, the Thrust Augmented Nozzle. Using a TAN, a traditioninal Hydrolox engine would have kerosene and oxygen injected directly to the engine bell, reducing the overall impulse while greatly improving the thrust, ideal for liftoff, while then throttling back the kerolox to the space-optimized high-isp hydrolox once out of the atmosphere, and smoothly transitioning between the two by throttling back the augmentation, keeping the performance optimized throughout the whole range of operation for what was needed.
I agree, developing the technologies first gives us far more capability. In addition, if you truely want to return to the moon, ULA, the primary rocket manufacturer in the US, has put on the table a proposal to do just that, with the existing non-shuttle lifting technology, while simultaneously reducing the cost to LEO through mass production. You can read their proposal here:
http://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/publications/AffordableExplorationArchitecture2009.pdf [ulalaunch.com]
Re:THIS is where our space program went (Score:2, Informative)
Reminds me of the Gemini project. A lot of people conveniently forget that the Gemini project was born out of USAF's manned space programme and was inserted into NASA's plans. That's why it flew on Titans. Originally there was no spacecraft between Apollo and Mercury projects. Gemini was the most successful projects of all manned flights where a huge number of firsts were established.
In the end MOL got cancelled, Military space programme was cancelled and NASA's budget was cut and eventually most of the Apollo projects were cancelled even before Apollo 11, more after that. Don't blame Obama for NASA's state, blame Bush with his lofty targets and no additional budget for the named targets... The result was a useless spacecraft - does anyone remember the original spec of 7 astronauts? It couldn't hardly do four as its last design, decades after Apollo.
Re:270 days (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rods_from_god
Re:THIS is where our space program went (Score:3, Informative)
You have it backwards. The USAF X-20 Dyna-Soar and X-15 programs were well underway until Gemini and Apollo came along and took all the funding and personnel. Now 50 years later they're trying to complete what the X-20 program started.
The X-15 program spent 2.5 billion and made 199 flights.
The X-20 program spent 1.5 billion before it was canceled.
Apollo cost 22.5 billion.
Note that NASA used much of the data gathered from these two programs and as such did not have to incur those costs.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Crowbar from orbit! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The big secret is the re-entry ablative spike (Score:3, Informative)
Here is an in-flight photo of the spike. [wordpress.com]
Here is a photo (on a
Another photo of the composite fuselage and load-bearing structure. [centurychina.com]
Similar photo on
The X-40A precursor vehicle to X-37B, landing with spike extended. [designation-systems.net]
Photos and drawings which do not show the spike:
This official USAF photo seems to chop the interesting area out of the frame. [wikimedia.org]
A drawing used all over the web, but I'm not sure of the source. [wuhan.net.cn]
Re:Cool! (Score:3, Informative)
You want to go from a high velocity in the X direction and zero in the Y direction to zero in the X direction and high velocity in the Y direction.
In other words around as much fuel as it took to get it up there in the first place.
You can't just turn it like a boat since there's nothing to push against so a rudder won't work.