
Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days in orbit - mrfusion
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/30/air-force-mysterious-x-37b-space-plane-passes-400-days-in-orbit/
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eterm
Funny how the article doesn't mention the X-37 at all, artist renders of which
are still available at the Dryden photo gallery and it's listed as "1999 -
present" (Although this gallery hasn't been maintained since 2005, so read
that as 1999-2005+).

[http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/X-37/index.html](http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/X-37/index.html)

So it looks like it was initially being planned to be run as a NASA project
out of Dryden.

Edit: Which I could have found out just by reading wikipedia rather than
maintaining a encylopaedic knowledge of the old dryden photo gallery.

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runjake
There's lots of talk about nuclear platforms. I don't believe that's the case
with the X-37B for a few reasons. We have better options elsewhere, the X-37B
designs I've seen don't seem to fit this picture, and NASA/Boeing Space &
Intelligence would not typically deal with nuclear weapon platforms.

I think it's clearly a reconnaissance (ISR) platform. Think Gorgon Stare [1]
but for an even wider area. As an aside, Dryden has a long history of testing
recon platforms.

Source: I used to work on this stuff (although not the X-37 program)

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare)

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DickingAround
Why is this 'secret'? We're not exactly in a cold war anymore and the
terrorists don't care if we're in space? Why not just tell us what the plane
is up front?

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gress
What makes you think we're not in a Cold War? There are plenty of countries
that are each other's adversaries and are actively trying to undermine one
another. Perhaps we aren't in a bilateral Cold War, but it's not like we
suddenly have world peace.

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VLM
"If they wanted to make it a weapon, the first thing would be to give it a
serious main engine"

I don't think asking a robotic arms control activist about orbital mechanics
and aerodynamics is going to result in anything insightful.

Plane changes are very expensive if you don't have the aerodynamics to get
cross range. So if you have a traditional triangular capsule, yes, you do in
fact need a honkin' big engine (and more importantly, a big fuel tank...) to
expand your "landing zone". But if you have wings, even if the L/D ratio is
not exactly a high performance glider, you still have an immensely larger
"landing zone" so you don't need a honkin' big engine. Thats why they invest
mass and volume in those wings instead of engines, tanks, and a parachute.

Another way to phrase it, is without wings you pretty much land somewhere
along the ground track you would have passed over plus or minus like ten
miles. But with wings, you can get hundreds, maybe thousands of miles of cross
range glide. Your orbit can be over Chicago but you can decide to land in
Florida.

We've had the strategic nuclear triad for decades, this thing's certainly big
enough to make a strategic quadrilateral or maybe one leg of the triad is
getting too expensive and needs retirement.

If you have patience, perhaps for a doomsday weapon or strategic deterrent,
you don't need wings, giant engines, or much of a parachute. Its obviously a
sensor platform not a weapon.

So what kind of sensor platform exists where its cheaper to launch 1000 one
terabyte hard drives in a NAS than to downlink all that stuff. Well,
"strategic" photographic imaging, maybe some kind of wide bandwidth SDR... The
kind of thing were you press the record button and a year later gather
demographic strategic intel, rather than a handful of snapshots of one semi-
tactical target. Like how many total radar units does Iran have, well, you
listen to the entire surveillance radar band over the country for an entire
year, then do a lot of analysis once it lands. Not for "gimmie a pic of that
one target today" type questions.

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marktangotango
>>If you have patience, perhaps for a doomsday weapon or strategic deterrent,
you don't need wings, giant engines, or much of a parachute. Its obviously a
sensor platform not a weapon.

Thank you. The other thing is; everything that goes up must come down. With
the X-37 you have control of WHERE it comes down, and less exclusively, when.
So much less risk of your tech falling into enemy hands.

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vaadu
Why is this vehicle still referenced as X-37? The mission appears to be
reconnaissance and no longer aerospace vehicle research.

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ChuckMcM
Good question, perhaps giving it an actual name would reveal too much. General
consensus seems to think its a 'deploy on demand' reconnaissance transport
(basically a bunch of signal or optical gear in the payload that it can point
at various places and then return). That would make it something like an MQ-37
or RQ-37.

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7952
The return ability also lets you collect data and store it on board for
recovery later. Any sensor that can see through clouds could generate a
colossal amount of data and there is never enough bandwidth!

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poopsintub
This is the first I've heard of it. Wikipedia says it's just under 10 feet
tall. I would never have guess it that small from the images I've looked at.
Aside from you know, the man standing at the bottom of the wikipedia photo...

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neals
For the lazy:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37)

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sdfjkl
> measuring over 29 feet (8.8 m) in length

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poopsintub
Yeap. My apologies, I was looking at the height.

Height: 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m)

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sdfjkl
Admittedly it is up for debate which is length and which is height in a VTHL
craft ;-)

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tammer
Anyone know if this would be capable of carrying a weapon that could hit
targets on earth? I assume all you'd need is a smart aerodynamic projectile
and gravity would take care of the rest...

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aaronem
Yes, but: nuclear weapons in space are prohibited by at least two treaties to
which the US is a signatory; any point on the globe worth hitting with
conventional weapons would be _far_ easier and cheaper to hit with, say, a
cruise missile or a drone-launched Hellfire; last but not least, you'd first
have to build a weapon to fit in this thing's cargo bay, which almost
certainly has not been done because, given the first two mentioned points,
it's not worth anyone's time or money to bother.

To understand the X-37, you need a reasonable knowledge of the origins of the
Space Shuttle program. The only reason that program came to even the
bastardized fruition it did was because the Air Force signed on, and they did
so only because they needed a means of servicing and maintaining their orbital
equipment. In theory, and occasionally in practice, this means involved actual
human astronauts going up and doing spanner work on satellites in orbit, but
this was expensive and fraught with undue difficulty; cheaper and easier was
simply to stuff the whole satellite into the Shuttle's payload bay and haul it
back down the gravity well for repair, refit, and relaunch, and indeed many
Space Shuttle missions involved precisely this evolution. (It's probable, if
uncertain due to the Air Force's bent for secrecy with regard to their
payloads, that the Shuttle was used to return some or most of these satellites
to orbit; on the other hand, a Titan-IV's probably cheaper, and the Air Force
has used plenty of those, too. I don't know much about what goes into that
sort of decision.)

The X-37, then, far from being some kind of conspiracy-theory FOBS, is just a
Space-Shuttle-style "space truck". The major difference is that technology has
now reached a point where it's possible for such a vehicle to satisfy the Air
Force's mission parameters without having to involve all the complex, costly,
and potentially disastrous encumbrances required to carry living humans into
space.

 _Edit!_ I've finally just recalled the name of the book from which I gained
my understanding of the politicking which took the Space Shuttle program from
initial conception to final operational "Space Transportation System". That
book is _The Space Shuttle Decision_ , published by NASA as part of the NASA
History Series, and you can read it online at
[http://www.nss.org/resources/library/shuttledecision/](http://www.nss.org/resources/library/shuttledecision/)
and, oh, probably lots of other places as well. A bit dry, but marvelously
detailed and surprisingly objective given its origins; I recommend it
unreservedly to anyone with an interest in the history of its subject matter.

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wil421
Could they potentially use it to grab other countries satellites in a time of
war? Such as taking down GLONASS or something else.

Why would the Air force need a "space truck" and not NASA?

Its easy to point the conspiracy theory finger when the military is involved.
Especially when they are staying silent about what the plane's purpose is.

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aaronem
Satellites in LEO, probably, albeit at enormously wasteful expense compared
to, say, an SM-3, or some other sort of anti-satellite missile. (Ships with
the Aegis guided missile system mount SM-3s, and they've been successfully
tested against satellites in low orbit.)

I haven't time at the moment to check, but I'd assume GPS and GLONASS birds
are in geostationary orbit (or whatever they call that now), which would
complicate matters significantly. I imagine the Air Force probably has some
sort of weapon in mind for such cases, but I wouldn't begin to know how to
guess what that is, except presumably a big rocket, whose payload is a small
rocket, whose payload in turn is a tiny warhead with some very precise
attitude jets.

NASA never wanted a "space truck". Ever see _2001: A Space Odyssey_? NASA
wanted something along the lines of the spaceplane/station/moonbase system
depicted in the first act; the Space Shuttle program was all they could sell
to Congress, largely thanks to the efforts of now-deceased then-Senator
William Proxmire. (If you've ever heard a science-fiction fan curse that name
and wondered why, now you know; if you want the full story, read the book
whose URL I just edited into my prior comment.)

And, yes, "its [sic] easy to point the conspiracy theory finger when the
military is involved." It's easy to do a lot of things, which is not the same
as saying those things are sensible or worth doing; ignorance, especially of
the trivially addressable sort, is no excuse for foolishness.

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_quasimodo
As far as i know, the navigation systems are somewhere in between LEO and
geostationary orbit.

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mcguire
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_satellite_navig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_satellite_navigation_orbits.svg)

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deletes
Nasa, you can't call it reusable if only the payload( read as: the shuttle )
makes it back.

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berkut
It's not just the payload - the entire airframe comes back and lands...

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Already__Taken
Deletes is referring to the rocket to put it into space also.

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ackydoodles
"Major Tracy Bunko — then posted at the Pentagon's Air Force press desk"

Now who can we get to really blow some smoke on these classified projects?
Well, there's Major Bunko, sir. They say he can really sling some major...
uh... bunko.

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etanazir
'hush hush'

