U.S. Air Force Set to Launch Space Plane

It has been a long haul to the launch pad, but the U.S. Air Force and Boeing are gearing up to loft the X-37B – an unpiloted military space plane, SPACE.com has learned.

Tucked inside the shroud of an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), the winged craft will be boosted out of Cape Canaveral, Fla., orbit the Earth and then make an auto-pilot landing in California.

It’s not the first such egg we have launched. Blackstar was flying a decade ago.

Two-Stage-to-Orbit ‘’Blackstar’’ System Shelved at Groom Lake?

For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit.

Now facing the possibility that this innovative “Blackstar” system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we’ve learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into “black world” history, known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/030606p1.xml

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