Posted on 05/08/2017 10:28:21 AM PDT by blam
The US military's X-37B space plane landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, ending its record-breaking 718-day orbit with a sonic boom during its first landing in Florida.
The US Air Force has two X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles, which it calls its newest and most advanced reentry spacecraft.
At 29 feet long and with a 14-foot wingspan, the planes are about one-quarter of the size of NASA's now retired space shuttles and have a cargo bay about the size of a pick-up truck's.
The first X-37 program started in 1999, and the X-37B first flew in April 2010, returning after eight months in flight.
The next mission, launched in March 2011, was 15 months long, and the third mission in December 2012 lasted 22 months.
"Our team has been preparing for this event for several years, and I am extremely proud to see our hard work and dedication culminate in today’s safe and successful landing of the X-37B," Air Force Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, the commander of the 45th Space Wing, said in a release.
The most recent X-37B mission, launched in May 2015, brings the orbital test vehicle program to a total of 2,085 days spent in orbit.
Amateur astronomers have been able to spot the craft through telescopes and observed it at relatively low altitudes — a little less than 200 miles up, according to some, which is lower than the International Space Station.
What the X-37Bs have doing during those 2,085 days in orbit is less clear, however.
The X-37B program "performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies," the Air Force said in its release.
The Air Force has said the program is testing "advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Hazmat suits to protect against radioactive particles.
You know, from the compact, lightweight reactor used to power the laser/particle beam.
The hazmat suits are a dead give away and I’m surprised they were allowed to be photographed.
They are testing an anti-satellite weapon.
I think this is cyclical and we only get the negative impact reported on, not the overall information we need to realize that these things happen from time to time.
Providing this SEARCH for those who may be interested in the straight scoop. You probably already know.
Take care...
It would not be prudent to bring back any unspent fuel. Stresses and heat are too high.
Your comments about protective gear occurred to me, and I agree with your take on it. It is rather revealing isn’t it.
Why would they need all that protection?
They may be solely anti-satellite oriented, but they may also be an SDI or even ground deterrent device too.
This is obviously above my pay grade, but these things do occur to me.
Kim’s failed missile launches are also fodder for speculation.
Ping.
> Great series i got them on dvd perhaps its time to binge watch again
Which series is that?
Is that what’s happening!? I thought maybe they were just going to wait it out in space. The question of what they would be waiting out is what had me worried. heh
Nah. Defense system against kim jong dung or whatever his name is. You know, the NORK designer that hildabeast gets her fashion sense from.
BFRC. If you can smell it, too late.
We are unlikely to see “rods from God” because it would make much of our own armor obsolete. Like Carriers, certain things are sacrosanct. Too many Flag Officer positions would be jeapordized. Heck “rods from God” would put and end to surface fleets too. No one wants to go there.
Next phase for a “X37-C” ought to reaching and sustaining orbital altitudes higher than the international space station.
Then we have “shuttle craft”.
Then we can make, in modules, a orbiting space platform, much larger and more purposeful than the international space station.
Then we can make and send up “modules” that when constructed together will make super large vehicles for very long human space travel, like to the other planets. One of the modules of such a vehicle would be large enough to carry a “shuttle craft” for ferrying humans from the long range space vehicle to a planet’s (or other body’s) surface and back.
Star Wars was not wrong in the “what it looks like” department, as far as the vehicular components of long range space travel, i.e. long range space vehicles and shuttle craft.
Uh..no.Not un-manned. See the picture with its 4 astronauts?
I’ll circle back to Rods from God in just a second ...
Imagine the world in 1945. The US has atomic weapons. No one else does. Of course there are scientists and spies and so this situation will change shortly.
Imagine the US announces that these are terrible weapons and should never be used. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragedies and should not be repeated. THEREFORE no other country will be permitted to have atomic weapons. Only the US.
Any country — Russia, China, France, even the UK — which experiments with these terrible weapons will risk nuclear attack from the US. Yup — we’re willing to nuke London if the UK performs an atomic test. So don’t. Just ... don’t.
I say we’d like a world today in which nuclear war was not a threat. Maybe ... MAYBE ... along the way we might have nuked Pakistan or something because they just had to go and test an atomic device. Well ... they learned their lesson, didn’t they?
Now, Rods from God —
I say we develop this weapon and announce that any OTHER country which tests such a thing will be attacked by the US with our VAST, PROVEN FLEET of orbiting platforms. AND we will fry their communications satellites with lasers. We will blind and cripple ANY nation which tries to get into the Rods From God business.
We would be the only country in the world with this capability. And we could use them to maintain the peace. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait?? Stand back and watch this ...
A nice dream. Unfortunately there’s no will left to do the right thing.
Neil de grasses Tyson is not as cool and groovy as he thinks he is
Think ‘toxic chemicals’.
Space weapons were banned in 1967 by treaty.
If the movie is Ishtar, the flight only seems 2,085 days long.
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