Posted on 04/07/2006 4:39:23 PM PDT by KevinDavis
After weeks of delay, the military X-37 space plane went through its first free flight through the skies over California's Mojave Desert today and landed autonomously at Edwards Air Force Base.
That's the good news from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The bad news is that the vehicle experienced an "anomaly" and went off the runway, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker told me. Fortunately, only minor damage was done, she said.
The X-37 was carried up from the Mojave Airport by Scaled Composites' White Knight airplane, the same mothership that bore SpaceShipOne into the sky for its historic private-sector space launches. That's been done several times before. But until today, either unacceptable weather or electronic glitches had stymied the maiden drop test — and the X-37 had to stay hooked to the White Knight.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Oopsie.
I hate it when the computer comes on and says, "We are experiencing a flight anomaly, this program will now shut down, press any key to continue."
More at the link.
Was this the " Dynasoar" project launches on the Titan II booster ?
More photos and an eye witness account, here:
http://www.mojaveweblog.com/pages/060407-1.html
X-37 Flies Free...Finally!
April 7, 2006 - Everything finally came together this morning (but only after a delay while ATC gave the flight a hard time about wanting a specific altitude for the drop, causing WK to have to come back with bingo fuel) and the Boeing/DARPA* X-37 performed its first ever free-flight this morning. The X-37 reportedly was dropped from about 37,000 feet, glided autonomously. On landing, it reportedly tracked centerline at Edwards AFB but then experienced an "anomaly" and ran off the runway, according to a DARPA spokeswoman quoted on MSNBC. Space.com quotes the spokeswoman as saying "ALTV’s autonomous landing sequence and initial touch-down were flawless and fully according to plan, but ALTV did not stop in the distance expected and rolled off the end of the runway. ALTV’s steering was nominal for the full length of the runway. All flight data has been recovered from ALTV. There was minor damage to ALTV—the nose landing gear is heavily damaged but the main landing gear and aircraft appear structurally intact." Because the landing was at Edwards landing, I was only able to shoot Scaled Composites' White Knight as it returned to Mojave. One of the few times that coming home empty-handed is a good thing!
Everyday AstronautPublicly thanking Paul G. Allen, who admitted to investing more than $20 million in the project, Rutan appeared to physically choke up when he said, "We were able to develop a complete space program from scratch for the price of one of those government paper studies.".
by Scott Gourley
June 21 2004
Popular Mechanics
reprised from
X-37 free flight has success, problems
By ALLISON GATLIN
http://www.avpress.com/n/08/0408_s4.hts
And of course they achieved orbit and remained there for two weeks, rendezvoused with the International Space Station, and didn't use any technology pioneered by NASA, all for $20 million.
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