
Experimental USAF space plane breaks record for orbital spaceflight - lil-scamp
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/26/experimental-u-s-air-force-space-plane-breaks-previous-record-for-orbital-spaceflight/
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Herodotus38
[https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=1...](https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=154946)

Here is an impressive photograph that an amateur astronomer took in June/July
of this year.

~~~
Herodotus38
Too late to edit my comment but amateur astronomer was a poor label for the
guy who took the picture. He is the best astrophotographer for satellites that
I've seen. Here is his personal website where he has his collection:

[http://www.ralfvandebergh-
astrophotography.simpsite.nl/home](http://www.ralfvandebergh-
astrophotography.simpsite.nl/home)

~~~
nwallin
There are two groups of people who take pictures of satellites:

1\. Amateur astronomers like this guy.

2\. Nation states who take clandestine photos of other nation's spy
satellites. These pictures are better, but you haven't seen them.

For everything else, there's some guy working in the lab who's like, "oh, you
want a picture of our satellite? Of course, there's like 40 of them on our
press site. Do you need more? I can ask around and see if anyone's taken
selfies from interesting angles." So there's no open institutional force
behind it. So the only reasonable outcome of natural market forces is that
amateur astronomers create the best pictures of satellites in orbit.

Amateur astronomer isn't a slur either, if that was your point. Take a look at
the galleries on cloudnights, a lot of it wouldn't look out of place on
NASA/ESA homepages.

~~~
batbomb
(3) Astronomers - usually not on purpose

~~~
skykooler
Astronomers usually aren't tracking satellites, so if one shows up in an image
it's only as a streak. You need to be moving the camera to track the object to
get a reasonably clear image (or very short exposure times, which are
relatively uncommon in astronomy).

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kanox
> breaks record of orbital spaceflight

It broke it's own record of "time-in-orbit" and as far as spaceflight records
go this is one of the least relevant. Once a spacecraft gets to orbit it is
very easy to stay there almost indefinitely.

Hell, the ISS breaks the record for "continuous habitation in orbit" every
day.

~~~
scarecrowbob
Man, if you wanna get points in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, you gotta land the
trick.

Same thing... I don't think the ISS is gonna land that trick, as far as I
know... I'd be stoked to find out I'm wrong about that, though.

~~~
moonbug
What?

~~~
vinay427
I believe they're saying that the requirement of landing after staying in
space for a long period of time should constitute a new record, and that they
would be excited to learn about plans to land the ISS back on Earth in some
capacity as this would place the ISS in the running for this record.

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colechristensen
Obvious missions for a long-mission mobile shuttle like this include

* intercepting and deorbiting space junk

* fixing friendly or sabotaging unfriendly operational satellites

* future weapons platform for offense or defense (say intercepting ground-launched sat-killing missiles)

* on-demand surveillance (with ordinary spy satellites you have to wait until your orbit is in the right spot, adversaries will know when your satellites are above them and adjust their activities to avoid surveillance)

* more routine human activities in LEO (spacecraft assembly, staging for higher orbits or interplanetary activities, shuttling between stations in LEO)

* Netflix and chill with our alien overlords

* Prep for mining activities further out

~~~
Tuxer
Space isn't like a highway where you can move from A to B at minimal expense.
Switching orbits, both orbit heights but mainly orbit inclinations, comes at a
very high delta-V expense and therefore propellant expense, which this craft
simply doesn't have the volume to hold.

This cannot shuttle between LEO stations and switch orbits to imitate multiple
observation sats unless those sats and stations are very close in terms of
orbits.

~~~
gvb
The U.S. Air Force's former top civilian, Heather Wilson, said it dips into
the atmosphere and uses its aerodynamic surfaces to change its orbit.

Ref: [https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-
secaf-...](https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-secaf-
explains-how-secret-x-37-space-plane-throws-enemies.html)

~~~
Phlarp
It uses an oblong orbit to gain a small window where the next orbit cannot be
perfectly predicted by an adversary that can only watch half the sky.

You can't gain delta-v by inducing additional drag on the craft.

~~~
nwallin
If a spacecraft is traveling at 4,000 m/s and it plows headlong into a planet,
it has gained 4,000 m/s of delta v.

Delta v a measurement of a vector, not a scalar. The fact that its kinetic
energy with respect to Earth is decreasing does not mean it isn't gaining
delta v. In addition to the obvious (lowering your apogee) you can also use
this delta v to change your inclination. It's not "free" of course- you need
to do other engine burns to both put the craft into the atmosphere and then
another burn to reestablish orbit once you're out the other side. But it isn't
clear to me that this is less efficient than just doing the burns without the
atmospheric assists.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If a spacecraft is traveling at 4,000 m /s and it plows headlong into a
> planet, it has gained 4,000 m/s of delta v._

Yes and no. You've changed your velocity by 4km/s. You didn't gain usable ∆v,
and you've just lost your spacecraft.

∆v means few related things. One, the amount of velocity change your mission
plan requires. Second, the velocity change your craft is capable of using its
own propulsion. Say you're plotting Mars orbit insertion. It requires (via
[0]) 1.5 km/s ∆v. But you're a cheater, and decided to use aerobraking to
bleed off (guessing a number) 1km/s of that velocity. This means you can
complete this maneuver with a craft that only has 500m/s ∆v at the point of
insertion. This does _not_ mean the _craft_ has gained ∆v.

\--

[0] -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/29cxi6/i_made_a_delt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/29cxi6/i_made_a_deltav_subway_map_of_the_solar_system/)

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thorum
I'm mainly surprised that we have reusable space planes at all. You'd think
that would get more attention.

~~~
riffraff
this still gets launched with a rocket, it's basically a very small unmanned
space shuttle, so it's not as "cool" as, say, something that goes to orbit
from the ground on its own.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Are single-stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceplanes even possible on Earth with
current chemical rockets? They're a PITA to build in Kerbal Space Program, and
there the universe is 1/10 the size of the real one (albeit with the same
gravitational acceleration).

~~~
mabbo
They are _possible_ , but not economically feasible. Tim Dodd has a fantastic
video showing just how ineffective they are.

Two (or three) stage rockets are just so much more efficient.

~~~
mabbo
Went and looked it up:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfc2Jg1gkKA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfc2Jg1gkKA)

Tim Dodd (The Everyday Astronaut) is just a very good speaker on all space-
related topics. Him and Scott Manley (with a healthy dose of Kerbal Space
Program) are incredible teachers about space.

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jedberg
> NASA began the X-37 program in 1999;

Maybe officially, but I definitely know people who were working on a Space
Plane program in the early 90s.

~~~
sandworm101
There have been people working on spaceplanes continuously since the Nixon
administration. Shuttle was _a_ spaceplane but there were/are lots of other
programs that fit that title.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Personally, I put the beginning of this program with the NASA Lifting body
program[1]. The most famous one for me being the M2-F2 which was shown
crashing in the opening sequence of the six million dollar man TV series.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body#List_of_Armstrong...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body#List_of_Armstrong_Flight_Research_Center_lifting_body_vehicles_\(1963_to_1975\))

~~~
smacktoward
Those who played the classic computer game _Buzz Aldrin 's Race into Space_
(which was completely open-sourced a few years ago: see
[https://www.raceintospace.org/](https://www.raceintospace.org/)) will
remember that one of the key decisions in that game, which was all about
building a space program that could get you to the moon, was whether to use
traditional capsules (Gemini/Apollo on the US side, Voskhod/Soyuz for the
USSR) in the mid-to-late game, or to go with reusable lifting body-type
vehicles instead. The American player could build the "XMS-2", a fictional
vehicle derived from the X-20 Dyna-Soar
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-
Soar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar)), and the Soviet
player could build a similarly fictional vehicle based on the MiG-105
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-
Gurevich_MiG-105](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105)).

It was a big decision gameplay-wise, as capsules were much cheaper to research
and purchase, but the reusability of mini-shuttles meant you didn't have to
buy a whole new crew vehicle for each shot. So if you could scrounge up the
money to buy a few in the mid-game, you could free up big bucks in the late
game that would otherwise have gone towards buying all those capsules.

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ncmncm
Without knowing anything about the classified missions of this thing, I can,
with complete confidence, say that the program is mismanaged; my guess is the
problem is at the very top.

The only unique quality of this vehicle is that it can re-enter the atmosphere
and then be launched again. Everything it does while in orbit, including
grabbing something to bring back, could be done by something else not unique.

Yet, they have exercised its unique capability only three times, and the rest
of the time kept it to activities that could be better done without it.

The alternative is that there really isn't much use for this thing, so they
keep it parked in orbit between uses.

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ryanmercer
Ralf Vandebergh has some photos of it on his twitter @ralfvandebergh
[https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh](https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh)

He has some good ISS captures too.

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sudoaza
I dont consider the X-37 experimental anymore, how long has in been flying?
It's kinda old news already, cool though.

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AstroJetson
Cool a mini space shuttle that is still flying around for testing stuff. Any
chance it has seats and can be used for rescues?

~~~
forgotmysn
to rescue what exactly?

~~~
wil421
Chinese or Russian satellite “rescuer”.

~~~
nine_k
I won't be surprised if a military satellite of any state capable of launching
military satellites will self-destruct if taken away forcibly from the
designated orbit. A simple acceleration test would suffice.

I also won't be surprised if when self-destructing, such satellite will try to
deliberately damage everything in its close vicinity.

~~~
mc32
I don’t think they make boobytrapped satellites that explode, but they may
remotely activate a self-destruct process which renders abduction pointless.

If they exploded it wouldn’t it create more problems than it solves in terms
of more flying debris they have to track as well as friendlies in the same
orbital path? (Like when Iridium 33 crashed into a defunct soviet satellite.)

~~~
bdamm
I also don’t think the attack would involve changing orbits. The attack would
be inserting electronic backdoor etc.

~~~
jonathankoren
Nah. Bolt cutters on an arm, or even just spray paint. You don’t need to be
close to do an electronic attack. If you’re close, you might as well hit it
with a hammer or snip the antenna and solar arrays off.

~~~
nine_k
This kind of sudden malfunction, along with acceleration not due to firing of
any engines, would be a signal for the self-destruction device, likely
chemically powered (explosive) and mechanically actuated. It would be sure to
shatter the interesting electronic parts, burning or detonating any remaining
fuel for bonus points.

~~~
bigiain
I suspect the arguments about how much launch mass to devote to self destruct
explosive and mechanism - compared to useful payload or manoeuvring propellant
- would be interesting to see...

~~~
TeMPOraL
I suppose your self-destruct mechanism could be "aim retrograde and burn _all_
remaining propellant". Might not turn out well for a spaceplane that latched
onto such satellite.

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rezeroed
Why does the vehicle look rusty? And what the the duct tape looking stuff on
the wing leading edge?

~~~
dexen
The vehicle in the photo has clearly been processed, and is ready for handling
or shipping. Not sure if the photo is after-flight or perhaps before.

 _> rusty_

The "rusty" parts look like crevices between protective tiles being sealed
with kapton tape[1] - general protective material that handles well extreme
environment, and is often used in consumer electronics, especially in places
where high temperatures are expected.

 _> duct tape looking stuff on the wing leading edge_

Looks like temporary protective coating of foam, for safe on the ground
handling, to prevent damage to the wing leading edge. If the leading edge is
anything similar to Space Shuttle's, it's hollow inside, surprisingly thin,
and somewhat brittle. Any cracks or damage would cause risk of overheating
during re-entry, thus need for extra protection. \--

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton)

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clarkrinker
Anyone with links to credible speculation on the x-37’s mission?

~~~
jandrese
[https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-
secaf-...](https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/23/former-secaf-
explains-how-secret-x-37-space-plane-throws-enemies.html)

Long term heat management hardware for space electronics. Among other things
no doubt.

~~~
ggm
_" I think it creates more misconceptions about what the mission of the X-37B
is and could lead to more international concerns that it's some type of
weapons platform," Weeden said. "I think that works against U.S. interests
because it will create more diplomatic problems for the U.S. when it tries to
point out Russian and Chinese 'unusual behavior in space' and push for
discussions on space norms of behavior."

In short, "it gives Russia and China one more talking point about how the U.S.
is the one 'weaponizing' space, even if that's not true," he said._

That's a huge potential downside. Like the Soviets believing in US first
strike intent. Having this craft do odd things only reinforces belief the US
is not operating in good faith at all times. And this, when manned spaceflight
to the iss depends on international cooperation still.

~~~
RobertoG
>>"Like the Soviets believing in US first strike intent."

the soviets? We are really going back, aren't we?

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neom
Excellent. Never the less, still super curious about the tictac thing. :)

