Posted on 12/07/2010 12:46:29 AM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The U.S. Air Force is evaluating the performance and condition of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-1), the reusable space plane that lifted off in April and remains the subject of much international speculation.
The unmanned spacecraft landed at 1:16 a.m. Pacific Time on 3 December at Vandenberg AFB, in California after 224 days and nine hours in space.
Though the service is not discussing specifics about OTV-1's classified payload, air force insists the focus of the maiden flight was the aircraft, not the payload or even potential payloads.
"Our ability to launch it and our ability to operate it were two of the key steps in the programme," says Richard McKinney, deputy undersecretary of the air force for space programmes. "But then the ability to successfully autonomously recover and land the vehicle was really the culmination of this first test phase of the programme."
Speculation on USAF's intended uses for the reusable space plane range from a prototyped orbiting bomber to an enemy satellite killer to a way to rapidly deploy and repair spy satellites.
The air service, however, insists the programme is, at this stage, just an experimental aircraft.
"This is a test vehicle," McKinney says. "That's what it is, pure and simple." Should it continue into service after the testing phases, the aircraft would be used as a testbed to see how technologies and materials react to long-term exposure to space, he says.
"Think of is as a satellite you are able to put on orbit and bring back," he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
I think of it as a way to go in orbit and bring back enemy spy satellites for inspection. Figure out what the enemy is doing, and disrupt the enemy program at the same time. Of course, our military would publicly disavow any knowledge of what happened.
Whatever it does, I hope they keep the real secrets out of the current administration grubby little treasonous hands.
The “assumed” missions listed above are probably pretty well right on target.
Wait for a Chinese copy soon. (Thanks to Clinton.) We could have been working on this since the Dynasoar (dinosoar?) re-entry vehicles were dreamed up in the early 60’s ....)
But when you throw in the weight of the X-37B, you are talking about having to put at at least 10 times the weight of the satellite to cover for the mass of the vehicle.
He is saying the entire vehicle is the satellite.
A satellite, per se, has no intrinsic need to be able to return to earth. If you make the entire X-37B to be “the satellite,” you are talking about, at a minimum, needing to lift ten times the weight into space, which might take 50 times the fuel. That would make for a strong argument to tilt the scales towards having a disposable satellite relative to a reusable one.
My understanding is that NASA originally wanted the small sized orbiter, that was capable of high orbit (perhaps able to reach 130,000 miles away from Earth. But the military demanded they build the large sized "Dynosaur" orbiter to handle large packages in near-Earth low orbit (only reaching a few hundred miles away).
If not for military intervention, we could have had a beautiful little platform Like the X-37B operational in the 1980s capable of high-Earth orbit, and that would have allowed us to perhaps have a space station in geo-synchronous orbit halfway to the Moon by this time.
Seems they have decided whatever weight penalty is “outweighed” by having a ‘reuseable satellite’ capability.
During the development of a “reusable” vehicle system that grew into the STS, one proposal was a two-stage vehicle that took off and landed as a plane; the first stage was to be a much larger winged vehicle that would haul the orbiter/reentry vehicle to high altitude using aerodynamics to save fuel and simplify recycling for the next flight. We wound up with a rocket-launched system, with the liquid-fueled “main” engines drinking out of a tank that was not reusable, and were dead weight, riding back to Earth in an area protected by the reentry plasma. Most of the pop comes from those SRBs.
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE!
An XB-70 is still available at Wright-Patt.
70,000 foot altitude, Mach 2+ . You won’t need the long range it has - but just put in enough fuel to “point up at high speed” 8<)
An you can get a “free” VERY LARGE bomb bay to drop loads from while at altitude.
SR-71/ variants “dropped” “fighter-sized” Mach 3+ hypersonic drone planes “up” from them at higher altitudes and even higher speeds. I understand 120,000+ feet ops were routinely run.
The B-70’s bomb bay might force you to lower than supersonic, but you gain much altitude and easier separation problems.
(Oh right. These were all 1960’s and 1970’s technology. Never mind. Can’t use them today. They haven’t been reviewed by vast computer models and tens of years of expensive research. )
Space Command must have access to space.
Heh... it’s weird how people like Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich, and their Skunk Works were able to design the SR-71 using blueprints and sliderules, and did so before they were asked to, so the development cycle included what would have been their spare time. Years ago, not long before Rich died, he recounted a supersonic drone they’d built to shoot all the way across China to do reconnaissance. The program was cancelled, but the remaining vehicles were mothballed, and dug out, reconditioned, and tested inside out to see how that kind of thing is done.
What USAF Space command needs is a seperate space program from NASA.
They should of never cancelled Dynasoar.
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