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Comment by ktrl | Hacker News Reader

>Air Force X-37B

The Air Force X-37B is not a missile or weapon.

>Don't get me wrong, Russia aren't some good guy, but when you actively do a thing for tens of years and then the other guy does that thing, you have no moral high ground left to complain.

Russia tested a satellite-to-satellite weapon which is completely unprecedented militarization of space.

The US has tested ground-based anti-satellite weapons on satellites in decaying Low-Eart Orbits. The debris quickly burned up in the atmosphere.

China is the only country to have blown up a satellite beyond LEO. The debris from that will be in orbit for decades. That was an unprecedented militarization of space and not comparable with anything the US has done in the space.

You are pushing a narrative that the US is the warmonger in space and that Russia is only responding in kind. The truth is that Russia and China are far ahead of the US in weaponizing space. The US is playing catch-up.

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> The Air Force X-37B is not a missile or weapon.

No, but that seems a little bit disingenuous. Aircraft carriers are neither missiles nor weapons either. We can recognize things as military assets that are neither missiles nor weapons.

The X-37B is a DOD asset, operated by the military, capable of deploying weapons systems. In that way, it is part of the military capability of the US.

It would be silly to use the X-37 as an anti-sat weapon: it's too expensive. Think of how cheaply SpaceX is putting up Starlink! A single Falcon 9 could probably put up a bunch (20? 30?) of antisat weapons that only ever raise or lower their orbits and fire .22s at their targets. The idea is to disable targets with as little debris as possible.

With larger anti-sat sats you could actually latch on to the target and de-orbit it for zero orbital debris destruction. This requires many more, much larger such devices because while it takes relatively little delta-v to raise or lower an orbit, it takes a lot more to match an arbitrary target's orbit (to which more fuel has to be added for de-orbiting).

Just having a theoretical conversation now, but

> antisat weapons that only ever raise or lower their orbits and fire .22s at their targets.

raising your orbit is the hard and expensive part, it takes a lot of propellant, which generally rules out smaller vehicles, right?

And if you want to destroy a satellite, you need a lot of kinetic energy, which for a tiny projectile means lots of speed relative to the target... But since your absolute speed determines the height of your orbit, the only way to get more than ~1000 ft/s is to have your gun-sat in an opposite-direction orbit to the target, right? And isn't it the case that our satellites are all orbiting in more or less the same direction, since they launch from canaveral and have to head east to be over water?

What if you used an object in another orbit to fire a projectile? Wouldn't that make the differences in energies pretty significant?

I did suggest "have your gun-sat in an opposite-direction orbit to the target". Yes, that would dramatically increase the kinetic energy.

The only issue is that using kinetic weapons greatly increases the risk of Kessler Syndrome; in other words premature mutually assured destruction. Kinetic space weapons are so easy to get wrong with outsized repercussions.

Otherwise raising orbit is expensive(ish) depending on whether you want a circular orbit. Matching an orbit can be expensive. If the target has auto avoidance like Starlink does then matching orbit becomes war of attrition; even getting the target to burn off its fuel is a win as it will drastically shorten its life span.

Deorbiting is relatively easy at LEO, just increasing frontal area is a cheap way to achieve it. Above LEO would normally require fuel of some amount.

You don't really need a lot of kinetic energy, it's not like satellites are armored. I'd think a pretty small kinetic energy, like a rifle bullet, would do it (depending on where it hit, obviously.) The trick is delivering that small kinetic energy...

Changing the altitude is fine, with all the electric propulsion that is available nowadays. You just need enough power and that means big deployables. The main issue is orbital plane changes, meaning that in the future, satellite-to-satellite weapons will not rendez-vous with the target but just do a quick approach while being on a different orbit and send/drop a low speed projectile to collide with the target. All this is already possible on a 100kg-class satellite.

> it’s too expensive.

Can you identify a time when cost was obviously a signifcant factor in a military choice? To me it seems that cost is low in the grand scheme of things.

Cost is not no object to the military.

If they could have 1,000 asat sats, they'd want to have 1,000. Can you imagine them saying "sure, let's just have an X-37B, one, just one, it will do"? If you need these in a shooting war, 1 ain't gonna be enough. You need lots of them. You can't have lots of them if: they're big and heavy (launches are too infrequent and too expensive) or if they're too expensive (you want 1,000 but can only afford 10).

Actually back in the day the Soviets were genuinely afraid of the Space Shuttle, as they though that due to it's capability for sudden orbit changes via aerodynamic surfaces. They thought it might start on an otherwise routine mission only to do a sudden orbit change that makes it fly over Moscow & nuke it with hardly any warning at all.

It is said that was also the reason they started the Buran and Energia project - while their engineers though the Space Shuttle was too complicated, expensive and dangerous (and they were right...) they also though there must be something special about it, otherwise the Americans would not build something that bad.

I am pretty sure that engineers of a country that has sent first man to orbit, built first space station, got first pictures from lunar and venus surfaces, those engineers knew very well that “sudden orbit changes via aerodynamic surfaces” can’t be done in a vacuum.

They have seen some dangers like sattelite theft and others, so they have built a vehicle with similar capacity just because you have to match the opponent, even if the idea doesn’t really work and there are more efficient ways of achieving same results.

It appears that the study was considering the shuttle's ability to glide while re-entering. They were afraid a shuttle could launch from Vandenberg and do a maneuver similar to the shuttle's once-around abort and approach the USSR from the south (most of their early-warning systems were facing north) and possibly even return home afterwards.

It's a cute theory but you should be skeptical of the claim that this study was the motivation for the Soviet shuttle program.

The main thing necessary to understand Buran is... why the big heavy delta wings? It is clear why the US shuttle has them: Reference Mission 3A/3B, which the USAF added to the design requirements in exchange for political cover in Congress (see T.A. Heppenheimer, _The Space Shuttle Decision_). If you launch due south from Vandenberg and you need to return back to your landing site (either because of the Reference Mission or because of a Abort-Once-Around) you have to be able to move roughly 1/16 of the Earth's diameter in the atmosphere (otherwise you end up in the Pacific Ocean), and that forces you to the big heavy delta wings that sacrifices a lot of payload.

But why did the Soviets need that much cross-range? First of all their spy satellites were not generally put into polar orbits (they used shorter lived satellites that didn't need sun synchronous orbits) and second of all, one polar orbit around from Baikonur runs right over Russian land rather than the Pacific Ocean, so they had no need for all of that cross range.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that a design goal for Buran was "copy the STS, but don't do quite as many silly things" because I simply can't find a use case for that much cross range for them.

I mean, the Soviet version of the B29 had extra rivet holes because one of the B29s they reverse engineered had a manufacturing mistake. Would they trust their engineers to make a close copy that wasn't exactly the same aerodynamically? I know that's in a different era of the USSR, but still.

When you encounter things you don't understand in complex engineering it's not unwise to copy them because you are either copying a harmless mistake, irrelevant appendix type feature or it's a key feature you don't yet understand.

Plus the cost overhead for a few more rivets isn't crazy; even if they're superfluous and you know it, better to spend brainpower on more complex and critical engineering.

Both Buran and Shuttle have wings to be able to return significant mass from orbit and soft land with it.

Think snagging enemy’s secret sattelite from orbit and bringing it back for research.

Delta wings aren't necessary for that. The Soviet's wingless first/early iteration of a Shuttle copy was designed to soft land with its 20 ton return payload by parachute, aided by retrorockets firing at the last moment.

https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/mtkvp-glushkos-o...

I would be willing to bet there are political considerations at play also.

The popularity of the Space Program in America has fluctuated over the years with a corresponding amount of support and funding from the government. That being said, the Space Shuttle was seen at the time as a major iteration in space technology. Moreover, it closely resembled an actual "space ship" from science fiction lore! For the first time space technology was recognizable and relatable to the American taxpayer.

They probably could have accomplished more with a less iconic design, but they would have had trouble selling it to Congress and taxpayers. For a society that's used to seeing billion-dollar metal tubes used up every several minutes before exploding into the ocean; the reusable "Space Shuttle" was a comfort investment for Americans that boosted confidence and enthusiasm for the Space Program.

The idea was to just dip your perigee a bit into the atmosphere, use the aero surface to change inclination, but not loose enough speed to put you apogee into the atmosphere as well.

Voila, you are now in completely different orbit, one that a conventional spacecraft can't achieve due to the delta-v requirements an inclination change would require.

Also once you have don this, you can put your perigee above the atmosphere by a short OMS burn.

"The Air Force X-37B is not a missile or weapon."

Unless you have a security clearance and are using the information from classified sources, you cannot claim this, and people should not believe this statement at all.

The X-37B is a classified US military project. There is no confirmation, either way, whether it is or isn't a weapons system, or whether it has already been used as a weapon system.

In fact, you can ask the US military point blank, is the X-37B a weapon, and you will get "no comment"

To be fair, if you asked them if it was a time machine they would probably say “no comment”.

Yup it's classified. Do you have evidence that it's a weapon?

The parent did not claim that it is a weapon, only that the statement

> The Air Force X-37B is not a missile or weapon.

cannot be proven. In fact they went on to say

> There is no confirmation, either way, whether it is or isn't a weapons system

Sadly I think more and more, that we are in the point of no repair (return). Regardless being US, UK, China, Russia we are in world govern by mafia like diplomacy/politics, and with recent development in nuclear, space and Antarctica militarization ... things does not look great... unfortunately there is no planet B nor there is a good enough bunker :/ ...

My whole life I thought that things could be solved with science and reason, but it seems we need a miracle...

You seem bummed out by the idea of where the world is going.

Look back at "The Future" as thought of by people in the 1950's and see how accurate they were. So don't think you will be accurate.

And if it is that bad, or worse, well you can only do so much.

Even though I am devoutly NOT religious there is a nice set of words: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference"

Good luck.

I think it’s naive to think the X-37 doesn’t have the capability to be used a weapon. A spacecraft able to stay in orbit for years with the ability to hide its payload from observers we must assume is carrying something onboard that can be considered a weapon.

It's overkill as an anti-sat sat. It'd be much cheaper to put up tons of anti-sat sats meant only for that purpose -- no need to reenter and land, no need for reusability, etc.

The X-37 is obviously a military device, since they're the ones using it, and it may well be meant for servicing U.S. military sats, spying on others' sats, jamming them perhaps, or outright stealing them, and, yes, maybe destroying them, but again: there's no point using the X-37 for anti-sat purposes as it's too expensive for that.

Why do we have all of this historical evidence about military purchasing and yet continued belief that current projects are all sensibly intended and operated?

I didn't say the X-37B is used sensibly. I said it's not a practical and inexpensive anti-sat weapon. It's just not comparable.

> or outright stealing them

They took a page out of Blofeld's book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Only_Live_Twice_(film)

Orbital dynamics means that literally anything in orbit could be an anti satellite weapon.

You’re technically correct, but I doubt deterrence is higher on SpaceX’s priority list than the USAF’s.

So now it's a weapon simply because it's owned by the Air Force? Are you saying there should be no military satellites?

Never made that argument, I also think the treaties on the non-militarization of space are wishful thinking.

At the end of the day, US has 3-4x more space infrastructure than CN/RU, and relatively more dependence. This gap has to be closed through whatever means even if it doesn't accommodate for best practice. Sometimes asymmetry in capabilities rationalizes pissing in the commons.

The first satellite caused huge concern in US, because it can be easily turned into a ICBM. To state X-37B is not a missile or weapon, is simply inconceivable for anyone who is not owning the thing.

This is precisely how most major superpowers justify their behaviors. Just because of their size and power, a lot of things can hurt other nations. It's not a matter of what one things, one has to consider their impact, and their target's tolerance.

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