It's Baaack! XB-37B Finally Lands 123
ColdWetDog writes "The US Air Force / DARPA 'baby shuttle,' the Boeing-built XB-37B has just landed after 469 days in orbit. No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days other than 'because we could.' I, for one, welcome our long duration, unmanned orbital overlords."
Of course you welcome it... (Score:1, Funny)
After all, you pay for it, you dimwit
Coincidental timing (Score:2, Interesting)
Same day the Chinese launch their most ambitious manned mission thusfar? Mmmkay.
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https://xkcd.com/695/ [xkcd.com]
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damn blurry monitor ...
Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese launch (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese space launch. It would provide a good evaluation of what Chinese missiles can do.
Re:Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese lau (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, they brought it down because the Chinese thought they might swing by to look at the XB-37B while they were up there.
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You've been watching too much Firefly.
Re:Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese lau (Score:5, Insightful)
We should start a kickstarter to bribe the chinese to plant a chinese flag where ours was, just so congress will get all fired up and get our space program going again.
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No. "Taikonaut" is a term some western media outlet came up with to sound cool. The Chinese government themselves refer to them as "astronauts" in their own English press releases.
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Since one of the supposed roles of the XB-37B is repositioning satellites I would have to assume that it has the ability to change it's own orbit.
Re:Possibly they wanted to observe the Chinese lau (Score:5, Insightful)
No quite, it actually moves the earth with special space warping technology. If that's not true, why hasn't the Air Force denied it?
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Could have been "out of gas"...
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man in space? (Score:4, Insightful)
uhh, you do realize that unmanned generally means that it doesn't havel ife support systems. We can get shit to the space station; we demonstrated that with the dragon capsule. However, we still don't have a way to get a man in space.
Re:man in space? (Score:5, Funny)
uhh, you do realize that unmanned generally means that it doesn't havel ife support systems. We can get shit to the space station; we demonstrated that with the dragon capsule. However, we still don't have a way to get a man in space.
We could cryogenically freeze the astronauts and send them up as popsicles. Then, once we invent equipment to defreeze them, we can send that up and thaw them out. Problem solved. With enough creativity, nearly anything is possible.
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Super green (Score:2)
We could cryogenically freeze the astronauts and send them up as popsicles.
CORBIN...DALLAS!!!!
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Frozen Spam in a can!
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uhh, you do realize that unmanned generally means that it doesn't havel ife support systems. We can get shit to the space station; we demonstrated that with the dragon capsule. However, we still don't have a way to get a man in space.
We could cryogenically freeze the astronauts and send them up as popsicles. Then, once we invent equipment to defreeze them, we can send that up and thaw them out. Problem solved. With enough creativity, nearly anything is possible.
Also it takes a while to die from exposure to the vacuum of space so technically we could also just get them up there REALLY quickly and hope for the best.
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We need someone to operate the defreezing equipment. That means we need to send more people up. Since the procedure for diong that is to freeze them, send them up and then send someone after them to defreeze them that's what we do. Of course that someone will be frozen, which means we need someone to defreeze them. After enough iterations of this the entire population of Earth will be frozen in space and no one will be able to defreeze them.
I think the best appro
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We could cryogenically freeze the astronauts and send them up as popsicles. Then, once we invent equipment to defreeze them, we can send that up and thaw them out. Problem solved. With enough creativity, nearly anything is possible.
Or, in this case, with enough astronauts.
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Actually, the Dragon capsule that just docked with ISS is the first cargo vehicle also designed to take things back from the station.
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165-180% scaling of the size is a pretty material difference - particularly when considering 3-dimensions making for 4.5-6x increase in volume.
The current vehicle has a footprint that is 15% the size of an F-22 Raptor (while the FUTURE scaled up version is roughly the same size) and a payload capacity of 7ft by 4ft .... that is not enough to carry life-support system let alone the systems and 1 or more human passengers
Re:But the US can't get into space?? (Score:4, Funny)
Allow me to assure you that the United States military does not have any manned spaceflight capability. At all. Whatsoever. Period. The end. So you'll stop asking about it if you know what's good for you. In addition rumors of a secret base in the asteroid belt are simply that. Wild, baseless rumors. Nothing to see here citizen. Move along.
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You do realize that nothing is so crazy that no one on that internet will believe it.
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In a pinch maybe yes ... but this is 1/2 size unmanned version of the non-yet-existent X-37C that was designed to fit in the cargo bay of the Shuttle
You know, like a 1/2 size version of bicycle designed to fit in your car's trunk might get you to work in a pinch ... not ideal and not even practical, but theoretically possible.
The future of spaceflight is robotic (Score:5, Insightful)
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It *does* really cost that much. Both in energy (sustaining human life is much more costly, energy-wise, than simply keeping circuits working), and in weight - when you ship people off into space, you have to feed them, water them, house them, carry oxygen for them, dispose of their waste, give them room to live, work, exercise... all of that material you have to ship off into space takes up space, adds additional weight to haul out of Earth's gravity well, and fundamentally limits the distance and duratio
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Re:The future of spaceflight is robotic (Score:5, Insightful)
We've always boldly gone where no one has gone before, for drugs, for food, for fun, for profit. We're not likely to stop. We'll try not to warp on your lawn, though.
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The last time we actually went where non-one has gone before was during an Ice Age.
Your assumption is invalid.
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I think they're talking about how he discovered Cuba
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But that doesn't change the fact that an obnoxiously loud contingent here on Slashdot watched Star Trek as children, and really, truly believe that they're going to get to bang vaguely ethnic looking space girls with pale green skin and silver hair on Proxima Centauri IV, just like Kirk did..
Nah, I just wanna go to space cus' I'm tired of Earth, it's full of idiots.
Also cus' it's cool, if some guy with verifiable credentials came up to me and said "Wanna go to space? It's a one-way trip and you might die on-launch or shortly after" I'd say "yes" in a heartbeat.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm glad to hear I'm well known. Sorry friend, but if you're behaving like a space nutter, I call it like I see it. Every time this type of article pops up, a bunch of naive idealists crowd in to tell us how stupid it is that we're not spending multiples of our GNP to send a handful of people to another planet to establish a colony, or mine iron ore from an asteroid, or some other foolishness that they claim (without justification) is "absolutely indispensable" to humanity's future.
They take great joy in
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Well fact of the matter is, The Earth is by the very definition of the word "planet" a limited resource. Even if we get a thousand times better at conserving resources and all that eventually we are going to use up all the resources on Earth and then we're gonna need to go to space, if nothing else with robots.
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You also need plenty of energy to take things apart and build things on an atomic level, actually it requires so much energy that the classic alchemic grail of modifying eg. lead to gold (which is possible) is not even worth it.
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Perpetual motion is forbidden by the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
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Except for Lisa Simpson.
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The sun will also run out of energy.
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I don't really wanna go to space, at least not for the next hundred years or so.
I'd be perfectly happy with industrializing LEO and maybe the moon. Also, we already *have* the source of energy you mention, it'd be controlled fusion. I know we cannot do it now but we will figure it out eventually, hopefully within the next 50 - 100 years.
Re:The future of spaceflight is robotic (Score:4, Insightful)
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Electronics are even more vulnerable to radiation than meat. You definitely need shielding if you don't want your data scrambled by cosmic radiation (or use big chips where bits are too big to flip by radiation but that limits your computing power).
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I doubt its going to happen, it makes it too easy to borg the entire human race.
Esxplanation (Score:5, Funny)
"No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days"
No official explanation, but anonymous sources on the inside report that spacecraft's internal clock was off by 199 days. Aliens could not have been reached for comments.
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In other words, they now know how the presidential elections will turn out.
Lemme guess, the Goldman-Sachs candidate is going to win?
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Can 2 candidates win at the same time?
Small reusable manned craft (Score:4, Interesting)
Although it's been proposed many times, nobody has ever put up a small, reusable manned spacecraft. The USAF had the DynaSoar program in the 1960s, but that was cancelled. Virgin Galactic is making noises about a small orbital spaceplane. Nothing like that has ever flown, but there's no fundamental obstacle.
The near future of earth orbit space may be Space-X's Falcon Heavy for freight, something from Virgin Galactic for humans, and robotic vehicles for military tasks.
Re:Small reusable manned craft (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah--it's basically a smaller shuttle designed to carry astronauts/pilots. From Wired [wired.com]:
"At a conference in California last week, Boeing program manager Art Grantz unveiled plans for an 'X-37C' that would be nearly twice as long as the current B-model, with a commensurate boost in payload. A pressurized cabin would have space for five seated astronauts plus one on a stretcher — presumably for medical evacuations from the International Space Station (ISS). The C-model space plane could be robotic like i
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From the Wired article: "Capsules, being more streamlined, must shed just 5 percent as much energy as a winged transport while re-entering the atmosphere. That makes them safer."
Arrant nonsense on all counts. But other than that, quite informative.
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You Should Not Believe (Score:1)
Or At Least (Score:1)
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That was a sad day for kerbals everywhere.
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Oh, you're overstating Jebediah toughness. Sometimes he wasn't grinning, but when Jebediah wasn't smiling you knew you were in some deep sh*t...
It's looking for whales (Score:2)
To bring to its homeworld.
An Explanation (Score:2)
No official explanation of why controllers kept the mission going past the original duration of 270 days other than 'because we could.'
DARPA needed the extra time to ensure that the XB-37B would not get fooled by the Iranians' GPS spoofing. [slashdot.org]
Re:An Explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, and drone missions over Iran continued unabated after the RQ-160 loss, why, then? Could it be that Iran didn't "spoof" anything, and it just made for a good propaganda win?
(Hint: no, we didn't "quick patch" the "problem" — the aircraft simply malfunctioned and crashed in Iran. And you're buying Iranian propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Congratulations.)
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How Do You Know ? (Score:1)
Quite perfect, eh? (Score:2)
That's why the underside of the drone was completely concealed with banners, and why BOTH wings had clearly been reattached?
Your definition of "quite perfect" must be quite different from mine. Your reply also doesn't address why drone flights had gone on for three years prior and continued uninterrupted if Iran had such a capability. I guess they downed it with their UFO technology! [wired.com]
Is That Correct ? (Score:1)
Sounds sufficient to me (Score:1)
Why would they need anymore reason than 'because we could'? Of all places, Slashdot should be full of people who would understand...