

 Thoughts on what the X-37B was doing in space? - abailin
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/air-force-x-37b-space-plane-landing-soon-101130.html

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dotBen
While the overarching mission/concept has disturbing aspects, in all honestly
it probably wasn't doing much of anything during its maiden voyage.

The biggest events were the changes in orbit, and that was probably mission
control testing positioning thrusters and associated systems to prove the
craft is capable of dropping in and out of a geostationary orbit and
repositioning itself into different orbit patterns with ease + accuracy (and
probably with little human involvement).

Given the craft hasn't passed a test of re-entry nor an automated landing from
space, it seems unlikely the US Air force would have loaded sensitive +
expensive monitoring equipment onboard, nuclear weapons or any of the other
conspiracies - on this initial trip anyway.

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tsotha
The Air Force doesn't suffer from the same kind of planning paralysis as NASA,
so I'm assuming they actually carried out some kind of mission. It's not clear
to me what this thing is really good for, though. The payload bay is about the
same size and shape as a coffin - far too small for the kind of sensors you
find on spy satellites.

They might have some scheme cooked up for refueling spy sats, which would
extend the service life and give them the ability to shift orbits more freely.
Still... even then, would it really be cheaper than lofting a new one?

In theory they could fit a guy in there, barely. That might make some sense
for repairs. Assuming you could find a good mechanic without a trace of
claustrophobia. And assuming the flight profile didn't flatten him. Maybe some
kind of teleoperated repair bot?

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regularfry
You could fold quite a large collapsing antenna into that sort of space, and
reconfigurable orbits would make very high resolution SAR scans available
virtually on demand. I can see that being _extremely_ useful.

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mjb
SAR is indeed a great use for this kind of platform, but the equipment needed
to do really high-quality work might be too bulky for this platform. The
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission equipment
(<http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/images/photos/srtm_22_lo.jpg>) certainly
wouldn't have fitted, given the description of the available space.

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jbester
Since it's maiden voyage I would guess not much other than a prolonged check-
out, maybe some surveillance and/or mapping.

As for the overall mission mandate may directly or indirectly be related to
prompt global strike, a kinetic kill system (either for satellites or for
ground targets), or electronic warfare.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike>

<http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god>

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tsotha
Neither of those strike applications make much sense for this platform. If you
were going to put bombs in space you're only wasting payload capacity by
including a ship.

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fendrak
A friend of a friend who works for the government apparently was recently
doing some work on high-speed interactions between orbiting bodies. Orbiting
bodies like satellites and space planes? Time will tell...

