SpaceX Will Launch Secretive X-37B Spaceplane's Next Mission (latimes.com) 83
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.
Re:Secrets... are only secrets when you keep them (Score:5, Insightful)
So what exactly does it do then?
Re:Secrets... are only secrets when you keep them (Score:5, Funny)
It appears to be a space shuttle, scaled for squirrels. And it's classified.
So, obviously, it's OFFICIALLY a Secret Squirrel Program. . . .
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And of course, because you can find everything on the internet... [pinimg.com]
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I've speculated on all sorts of things in the past. Primarily it's a movable spy satellite system. Both direct observation from the platform and deployment on micro satellites that are much harder to track. The drone can sit up there until it runs out of resources/fuel. It can also adjust it's orbit on demand.
There are militaries the world over that track both commercial and government spy satellites that will save and hide their movement until a times when the satellites no longer have direct line of sight
Hugo Drax, errr, Elon Musk (Score:2)
Oh, wait. That was some other guys. He never said that.
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So what exactly does it do then?
Test how special electronics and heat pipes will fare during a long-duration space mission.
There, the secret is out. Might as well just cancel the whole project.
Or ... they wouldn't lie to us, would they?
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After launch, go to http://www.heavens-above.com/ [heavens-above.com] to see exactly when the X-37B will be overhead and visible.
"Vote of confidence" (Score:2, Flamebait)
More like "vote of cutting corners". Aka "you're cheaper, I'm insured, fire it up for all I care".
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Surely the USAF self insures?
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Indeed. And I'm sure they have quite a bit of money wrapped up in the X-37B.
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In the technology, not so much the prototype.
Wanna bet the between flight overhaul cost is a big % of the per unit cost? How would we ever know?
Re:"Vote of confidence" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the US Military - cost is not a factor.
What excites the USAF brass is SpaceX turnaround. Musk is targeting 24 hrs for a Falcon 9b5 turnaround; with any extra capacity he could put another X37B into orbit with a few days' notice. That is tremendously advantageous for space soldiers and spies.
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Keeping costs low makes it easier to hide programs that they don't want The People to know about, so there's benefit there as well.
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Keeping costs low makes it easier to hide programs that they don't want
sigh....
Is this opposite day for you again?
It is keeping budgets high that allows hiding expenditures, dumbass.
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Keeping costs low makes it easier to hide programs that they don't want
It is keeping budgets high that allows hiding expenditures, dumbass.
Costs != Budgets, kid. Keep trying though, son.
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Whores generally aren't that expensive, what did you expect?
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Trump will leak it to the Russians if he's in office long enough.
I thought we weren't going to talk about the pee tapes here.
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mr Musk should leak all the details of the X37B cuz hes a computer person
Apart from how much it weighs and the details of what orbit it's heading into, I doubt anybody at SpaceX actually knows what the X37B actually does, including Musk. One could speculate I suppose, but I'm sure the USAF is keeping the actual mission details to themselves...
It's a contract launch that says... Here are the launch specifications, weight, center of gravity, size and on pad environmental requirements, here is the orbit we want and when we want it launched. Finally, here is the schedule of payme
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X37-B does have cross-range capability, but not enough to evade people tracking it from the ground. http://www.heavens-above.com/ [heavens-above.com] will show its location and orbit shortly after launch.
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Whats experimental and secretive about it? (Score:2, Informative)
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?
Re:Whats experimental and secretive about it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fucking with satellites of other nations?
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Most likely something to do with satellite tapping or interference. Or at least that would be one of the least surprising end goals of this whole project. They might start small scale by seeing how well the spacecraft can hide from being detected by monitoring stations on Earth.
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Yes, but you probably didn't see the ion-thruster microsats that it released in order to cause all manner of mischief and mayhem.
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Plus a ground based station is probably MUCH closer to a LEO satellite than the X-37B can reach, and would have far more power to interfere.
I don't think it is interfering with space objects, but rather observing the ground.
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Re:Whats experimental and secretive about it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The USA managed to build and launch an airliner sized crewed reusable spaceplane called the shuttle in the 1970s.
At huge expense and suspect reliability. The shuttle never lived up to the expectations for the project. It was too expensive and complex. The shuttle wasn't in principle a bad idea but the final design was something we did because we could, not because it was the best approach. We probably should have done something more along the lines of the Apollo Applications Program [wikipedia.org] had we known what we know now.
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.
Probably little or nothing to do with the external parts of the craft. Could be weapons, surveillance equipment, or it might just be a test bed for classified technology. It's staying in orbit for really long periods of time so that's probably a hint. Lots of potential reasons why it's all hush hush.
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The shuttle was never used to its full capabilities. Nothing in the AAP could have safely brought a satellite back from orbit as the shuttle managed on 4 occasions.
The shuttle failed in its primary goal (Score:3)
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
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Nothing cheaply (Score:2)
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.
Re:Whats experimental and secretive about it? (Score:5, Informative)
It can stay in orbit for months to validate technology which cannot be tested any other way.
It soft-lands so that the experiments can be controlled and validated
It can be launched on any EELV compliant launcher
It doesn't cost >$1B to refurbish for each launch.
I don't recall all of these existing 40 years ago in a single vehicle...
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The shuttle could have stayed in orbit for months if it didn't have a crew. And I don't see this thing taking a full crew + 22 ton payload anytime soon. I'm not saying the shuttle was the best there could have been, but compared to this thing it was a 747 compared to a cessna.
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Without a crew compartment you don't think they could have found space for a few more?
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fuel cells for power, which would run out of fuel after about a month
How much of that power was for life support for the meatsacks?
Design intent (Score:2)
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 an
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Any shuttle launched without a crew would have crashed and burned as the shuttles were unable to perform fully automated landings
Stop trying to make the X-35b into what it isnt: a shuttle, SLS's time of >$1billlion per launch costs is thankfully in the past and is a poor yardstick to use in any case.
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And costs an insane amount per shot, with very restrictive (and predictable) "firing" windows due to orbital dynamics. If you really want kinetic energy weapons, there's a much better way: railguns [youtube.com]. The goal is to be able to fire a dozen or so rounds per minute, many tens to hundreds of kilometers, with precision hits having the ability to penetrate any armour and almost any traditional fortification, with ammunition being cheap (~$25k per shot) and able (due to its small size) to be stored onboard in gre
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Should be easy enough to find out "whats so cutting edge about the X35" - it became the JSF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Recall that a good number of Shuttle flights were run by the Air Force and that much of the flight manifest and records are classified. So, the Shuttle had some utility for the AF. Think of the XB-37 as Shuttle 2 - minus the meatsacs and a couple of other things that they found out they didn't need.
My toy box. All mine.
Not the Space Craft (Score:2)
The Space Craft is not a secret.
It's the cargo.
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A male Falcon rocket is technically known as a "tercel".
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A male Falcon rocket is technically known as a "tercel".
Aren't all rockets male? Maybe a space plane could be female...
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Re:Atlas (Score:4, Funny)
It doesn't matter what docking parts it has! Stop being a bigot. It should be able to go into the hanger it identifies with.
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Mod +1 Funny
Good launch to watch (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
at what point... (Score:3)
Do the drop the X designation?? Almost a decade if flight, I think it passed the test , and what would its new designator be ?
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There's are two. It stays an X when it moves to mass production. Even the sr-71 had dozens of model built.
Seriously how hard is it to not realize that the difference in designation is as simple as number of units built to a model.
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X series planes do receive a new designation when they become slated for regular production - see the X-35 becoming the F-35: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The production version is technically new/different, but it's more the relationship of prototype and production model (though prototypes planned as such have a Y designation rather than X).
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My favorite useless fact about the SR-71: The armed forces have a standard for how they are designated [wikipedia.org], and that particular version of the plane was designated RS-71.
But a General preferred "SR" over the standard, and had a speech by President Johnson altered to use SR-71 instead; but the Media's transcripts still had "RS" in it, leading the media to believe the POTUS misread it.
The reason why it uses "71" instead of "12" (to go along with Y-12, A-12) is because there was a contemporary prototype, the XB-7
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Do the drop the X designation?? Almost a decade if flight, I think it passed the test , and what would its new designator be ?
I don't think so. All the X-planes [wikipedia.org] have been test vehicles to test new tech that would hopefully be integrated into other designs. Quite a few of the x-planes have been space planes or lifting body tests that have probably contributed to the X-37B. Although most never made it to reality or flew, the Air Force has apparently been wanting a space plane for a long time, since the 60's at least with the X-20. That this one was built and has been flown several times, and that they have released some of the uses