SpaceX Rocket Launches X-37B Space Plane On Secret Mission, Aces Landing (space.com) 93
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: The fifth mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane is now underway. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the robotic X-37B lifted off today (Sept. 7) at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. About 2.5 minutes into the flight, the Falcon 9's two stages separated. While the second stage continued hauling the X-37B to orbit, the first stage maneuvered its way back to Earth, eventually pulling off a vertical touchdown at Landing Zone 1, a SpaceX facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is next door to KSC. The Air Force is known to possess two X-37Bs, both of which were built by Boeing. The uncrewed vehicles look like NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiters, but are much smaller; each X-37B is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a payload bay the size of a pickup truck bed. For comparison, the space shuttles were 122 feet (37 m) long, with 78-foot (24 m) wingspans. Like the space shuttle, the X-37B launches vertically and comes to back to Earth horizontally, in a runway landing. Together, the two X-37Bs have completed four space missions, each of which has set a new duration standard for the program. Exactly what the X-37B did during those four missions, or what it will do during the newly launched OTV-5, is a mystery; most X-37B payloads and activities are classified.
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I, for one, welcome our new robotic spaceplane overlords.
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I believe he was referring to sending humans there.
In that case the difficulty is certainly related to distance.
What about Irma? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just wondering, now that they have an 11 story (I think) tall empty, lightweight booster sitting on the pad, will they be able to get in indoors before Irma comes and literally blows it away?
Even if they do, are the structures strong enough to take a direct hit? (I guess so, they've been around since the space age).
Kudo's as always to Space X and their flabbergastingly awesome repeat landings of their booster stages! No matter how cheap the competition (China?) makes their expendable boosters, you can't beat reusing them. I understand that the Falcon Heavy has passed its engine tests (a cluster of three Falcon 9s). Good luck for their November launch! Please, please make getting to orbit 10x then 100x cheaper! (Unrealistic maybe but I can dream).
Too bad that the X-37Bs don't have enough delta-V to get themselves to orbit without using a second stage (with external fuel tanks?). Then we'd have an (almost) completely reusable launch system!
Re:What about Irma? (Score:5, Informative)
Main Cape hangar that SpaceX has is rated for strong Cat 4.
Most of the Cape infrastructure is rated to handle Cat 3.
They are pretty quick in getting the booster horizontal and carted away. I would expect it to be in a hangar today, well before Irma gets there.
I'm bit more worried about the two older spec boosters that they have stored outdoors... tho I'd assume they can find some place to stash them into before the storm gets there. These are boosters that are not planned to fly again, but might end up as museum pieces somewhere.
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Don't give him any ideas, he has nukes, you know.
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You have no right not to feel threatened by a hurricane. It's not responsible for your feelings.
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Get over it. You're boring.
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Oops sorry, you're right it should be "Kudos". (I've got a bad cold and am not thinking straight)
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Video... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the video webcast, [youtube.com] in case you missed it. (22min) Does not include 2nd stage coverage, since it's classified.
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Does not include 2nd stage coverage, since it's classified.
Well, here on Slashdot, "Nudes for Nerds", we always say, "GIFs or it didn't happen!"
Not to split too many hairs, but if it's "classified" . . . this kinda sorta of implies that it is "classified as something". Like, "classified as safe for human consumption", or "classified as very likely to start WWIII on the Korean Peninsula".
So what is this critter classified as . . . ?
On another note, I would just absolutely love to see SpaceX hire the late Gerry Anderson to design their spacecrafts.
That would be
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Re:Video... (Score:5, Funny)
So what is this critter classified as . . . ?
That's classified.
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Or, you know, very quiet.
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I love the way they describe the X-37B, as a platform for perfectly normal scientific experiments, nothing more, yet the trajectory is classified. Yeah, right.
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But then why exactly is its orbit such a secret?
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But then why exactly is its orbit such a secret?
Why do you think?
So the folks who might want to know where this thing is cannot find out easily. Of course, it's not like you can hide a satellite from those who are intent on finding it. Amateur astronomers have found and tracked past X37b flights pretty quickly by knowing the launch time, launch location and making a few assumptions about the kind of orbits would be used.
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There's no such thing as a secret orbit, national actors will have the orbit nailed down within hours, amateur observers within a week or two.
You look for the unknown warm thing against the coldness of space, and measure its movement against background stars. Not exactly easy, but also not ridiculously hard either.
The reason why the orbit is secret, and there was no coverage of Stage 2, is that it's simply easier to just classify the whole thing, and have a clean breakpoint, than to pick and choose what par
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So it can't be intercepted. Another possibility is they use it for spying on other satellites in orbit and don't want anyone else to know about it.
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Another possibility is they use it for spying on other satellites in orbit and don't want anyone else to know about it.
My point exactly...
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The Hubble telescope was built with lens polishing techniques that the NRO taught NASA from its experience with spy satellites.
Well, not to nitpick too much, but Hubble's mirror (not lens), was manufactured by Perkins-Elmer, the same company that produces the mirrors for the NRO. Other than the fact that the figure on the mirror was incorrect, and that the test plans/QA process failed to detect this, going with PE was a sensible choice. They had significant experience building space qualified, lightweight, large diameter parabolic mirrors.
Another landing? Boring. And that's awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another landing? Boring. And that's awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing that the fact that landing skyscraper-sized objects with pinpoint accuracy after a hypersonic reentry from outer-freaking-space has now become "boring" ;)
I love living in the future.
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You forgot doing that on the edge of a hurricane.
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Amazing that the fact that landing skyscraper-sized objects with pinpoint accuracy after a hypersonic reentry from outer-freaking-space has now become "boring" ;) I love living in the future.
Not to take away your personal sense of awe and wonder, but I think most people for the last few hundred centuries has felt that way. Apollo program? The wonder. Radio? The wonder. Horseless carriages? The wonder. Electricity? The wonder. Telephones? The wonder. Airplanes? The wonder. Photography? The wonder. It just happens to be what is possible now, that wasn't possible when you were born. The next generation will think, duh rockets land. They've always landed, what's the big deal. It would be kinda fun
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I'd rather go backwards and show them all the cool stuff...granted I'd be hanged as a heretic in about 15 minutes (or die from the plague) but who cares?
I'd still have my 15 minutes.
a 'secret' mission? (Score:1)
i don't think anybody is really wondering what this 'secret' could be. expect some flattering closeups of dprk's supreme leader and his arsenal, along with companion shots of nearby chinese activity, to be sitting on analysts desks by the end of the weekend.
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It's in a polar orbit, so at some point it will pass over *everywhere*...
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Not if launched from Florida. Achieving polar orbit from KSC would require overflight of land, which isn't permitted. Polar orbit is why Vandenberg exists.
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Their mission may be officially secret, but I'm pretty convinced that they are actually a replacement for the SR-71.
It's not big enough to carry the cameras/optical systems needed for a mission like that, nor the power systems to power it. Also, the NRO is responsible for the intelligence birds, so your theory is pretty unlikely. A more likely scenario is that the system is used to test various technologies in orbit for future Airforce missions (say updated Bhangmeters, atomic clock designs for GPS, guidance systems, etc... ) and then return them to earth so they can be torn down and examined.
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I could be wrong, but isn't the large majority of the SR-71 fuel and engines? I don't think the recon pod takes up all that much room because there isn't all that much room to begin with.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were testing various things including some cameras and optics. Granted anything that can see a place to spy on it can also be seen from that place.
TBH I think it may be part of a long term plan for a space-based drone fleet of some sort. Either for space based warfare or other high-altitud
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I could be wrong, but isn't the large majority of the SR-71 fuel and engines? I don't think the recon pod takes up all that much room because there isn't all that much room to begin with.
Yes, but it was flying a lot closer to the ground than the X-37B is orbiting. Yes, the SR-71 is one of the highest flying air-breathing aircraft ever built, but its service ceiling is only 85,000 feet. The karman line is defined as 100km, so roughly 330,000 feet, roughly 4 times that distance, and being that low isn't a very stable orbit at all (certainly not suitable for something staying up for 6+ months).
Why is this important? Well, the further away you are, the higher the angular resolution you need to
Captain Obvious here (Score:2)
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"...the true mission is to see how well a Hostess Twinkie's "freshness" is sustained when exposed to a hard vacuum and unadulterated solar and cosmic radiation."
The intelligence community is saying Kim Jung Un's recent nuclear tests have a similar purpose.
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AI or rather military rockets? (Score:2)
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I remember Elon Musk said that the AI could can cause the WW3. I've got an impression at that time that he was kind of a pacifist.
It's all about the adulation for Musk... He will say anything to get folks to praise him, especially if it means he gets rich at the same time. it's his way of proving to himself that the taunts of his childhood are not true.
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Until the AI figures out how to break out of the VM and crash the universe...
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if that were true there would be colonies on there by now
The reason why a moon base has not happened is simple economics. Essentially the military spending on space technology outstripped the scientific spending in both the Soviet Union/Russia and the USA. The space shuttle program was a compromise with a huge portion going to military jug head flights and any other manned space programs Nasa had plans for were all gutted. The advancements that Van Braun and the real geniuses behind space flight were all castrated and sunk into the single lift technologically of
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The real reason why things stopped after Apollo 17 is that it was pretty much a big political dick waving exercise, to prove that the US was better than the Soviet Union. It was enormously expensive, had less support at home than most people remember, and once the race was won, people really did question why should it continue? That said, once humans set foot on the moon, it meant (really good) science got done, but don't kid yourself. Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon due to world politics, not sci
Re: i dont believe poeple were on the moon (Score:2)
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The reason why a moon base hasn't happened is simple economics. It would be extremely expensive, and wouldn't provide any comparable return value. It would be of some use, but there's not much research we can do on the moon that we can't in low Earth orbit. There's no currently valuable resources on the Moon that would pay for the cost of their extraction and shipping to Earth. It would be useful to know how the human body fares at 1/6G (we know it works at 1G and deteriorates badly at 0G, and nothing
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More data expected. (Score:2)
Exactly what the X-37B did during those four missions, or what it will do during the newly launched OTV-5, is a mystery; most X-37B payloads and activities are classified.
It is believed top officials of Russia and China already know what those activities are. We expect soon a Russian counterpart of Edward Snowdon to release the Russian government hacked documents and anonymous and WikiLeaks to publish it. .... Just kidding. Not going to happen. They (top officials of all three countries) know. We will never know.
Say what you will (Score:5, Insightful)
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If private space flight was impossible, why was it banned in both America and the European Union, both of which then pressured everyone else (such as Libya) to disallow it?
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Private space flight never was banned anywhere.
Stupid conspiracy theories.
Of course you need to file a flight plan and show basic security measures, after all: it is a flight!
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Elon Musk is someone a lot of people love to hate. Say what you will, but I think this tech is fucking awesome and he's the one who made it possible.
In this case Musk didn't make it possible, he just made it cheaper. Of course that's it's own achievement.
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Actually a lot of the rocket pioneers like Von Braun actually started building rockets outside the military industrial complex. At one time in Germany (1930s) there was a lot of competition between different teams to provide fast commercial delivery of mail with rockets. The work on that was forbidden by the Nazis during WWII.
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Contrary to the Gospel of the Cult Of Elon - Musk did not invent private spaceflight.
Private spaceflight got it's start when the booster builders started selling launches to the owners of privately owned satellites - back in the 1970's. You're only happy because you're a moron who is ignorant of fact and history and have bought into NewSpace's revisionist version.
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o.0
No, I'm comparing apples to apples and working from the facts rather than "fake news". But then, I'm not a clueless idiot.
Cosmic Top Secret (Score:5, Funny)