Mysterious US spaceplane returns to Earth | Hacker News Reader

Mysterious US spaceplane returns to Earth

bbc.com

34 pointsjcater16 comments

It doesn't seem that mysterious. It's almost certainly involved in reconnaissance.

    [T]he military spacecraft was passing over the
    same region on the ground once every four days,
    a pattern he called “a common feature of U.S.
    imaging reconnaissance satellites.”

    In six sightings, the team has found that the
    craft orbits as far north as 40 degrees
    latitude...In moving from as far as 40 degrees
    north latitude to 40 degrees south latitude,
    the military spacecraft passes over many
    global trouble spots, including Iraq, Iran,
    Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.htm...

It is an interesting, if perplexing, capability. My guess is that they are using it basically like a refuelable reconnaissance satellite. That way they can task it to various hot spots, keep its orbit changing so that folks won't be able to predict when it will be overhead, and yet not lose the hardware once it is out of gas.

I note that a Falcon Heavy will be able to toss it into a GTO :-) That is when you can use it to be really mean to people if you choose.

And to elaborate on what a GTO is, rather than permit the preceeding comment to become ensconced in jargon, the "T" stands for "transfer" in the sense of transferring from maybe a lower orbit to a higher orbit, or, in other words, changing altitude.

So, a Geosychronous Transfer Orbit, gains in altitude, while staying directly overhead at the same point on the earth's surface, even though the earth below is still in rotational motion. But, at points closer to the equator (where much of the good rocketry real estate resides), to keep up with a fixed point on the ground, while traveling farther and farther away from the central axis of rotation, ever greater lateral distances must be covered at increasingly greater speeds.

Meaning, if you can keep your rocket directly overhead, over a zone and airspace you can control militarily (by denying enemies access to it, or maybe by choosing a place that doesn't need to be defended), while putting it as high in the sky as possible, it will be much more difficult to shoot down, providing the advantage of being able to then move this proverbial chess piece into position anywhere you want, without too much concern of being denied access to that perch.

It's also re-instrumentable too, so as tech and needs change, so can the instruments.

The body seems relatively cool compared to what I can find of the space shuttle, despite not quite knowing how long after touch-down the image was taken. I wonder if some new heat-dissipating technology, or similar, was amongst those being tested?

"The US Air Force's X-37B appeared at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 3 December 2010"

Picture is from a while ago.

I wasn't concerned too much for publication date, but more so about the time between touch-down and the thermal camera going "click"... in terms of thermal loss comparisons to the NASA space shuttle.

The picture in question was from long before takeoff, let alone touchdown.

What do you base that on?

That the photos taken at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 3 December 2010, were taken before the ship was launched into orbit.

Before the current mission launched. 3 December 2010 was the end date for the first mission

So googling a bit, it seems to be a still frame from the video on this page?

http://www.outlookseries.com/A0992/Security/3696_X-37B_Orbit...

So it's just a few seconds after touchdown.

I'm wondering if this could be a vehicle not just for reconnaissance but also delivering a kinetic energy projectile from space ? (Note - i'm merely speculating)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com