Steve
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X-37B returns from space
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TangoWhiskey
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The second mission has been up in orbit for 10 months now (since March of last year). This article has some speculation on what its mission might be:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46091282/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.Tx2ccG9fghU
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46091282/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.Tx2ccG9fghU
ChrisK
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Well my head has been in the sand. I did not know we had that kind of military space program.
That is pretty darn cool.
That is pretty darn cool.
KSCessnaDriver
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Yeah, it only took us 20+ years to accomplish what the Soviets did. Unmanned, computerized shuttle landing.
Yeah, but look at the soviets now.
KSCessnaDriver
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One country is putting people in space and one isn't. Funny that the Russians are still up and running and we've got nothing. Might it be that they are content with what is basically the same design of rocket that put Sputnik in space? Or might it be that they know their budget and can work within it?
zaitcev
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Pete Zaitcev
I guarantee that Russians never were "content" with the original R-7. They would not be building Angara if they were. But even within the R-7 family the progress was rather significant. Moreover, TsKB is working on re-engining R-7 with NK-33. It's like putting a PT-6 into Bonanza, only worse, because the tanks have to be changed significantly.
Well, yeah, that may be the case. NASA would be much more successful if they stopped lusting for the days of Apollo and quit building redundant and unnecessary mega-rocket which eats 37% of the whole budget of the agency.
Jim_R
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Jim
Huh? You mean Buran? The thing that flew once, then sat in a hangar until the roof caved in on it?
About the only thing our Shuttle couldn't (easily) do autonomously during the reentry / landing phase was deploy the landing gear. That was a design choice, not a "geez, we've got no idea how to autonomously deploy the landing gear!" technology gap between us and Russia.
zaitcev
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Same as X-37B, then, right? Except the roof - hopefuly!
Excuses, excuses. Astronaut Office did their darnest to make sure that Shuttle was impossible to fly and land unmanned. Does it matter though? Russians did it first.
KSCessnaDriver
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Still, why is the USAF spending buckets of cash on a program that the Soviets demonstrated years ago?
Again, who is putting people in space now and who isn't? I think its ironic to be honest.
zaitcev
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Compared to what Shuttle did and SLS burns per year now, X-37B is insignificant. We're talking at most 200 million a year, much of which is hitching a ride on Atlas. So, those buckets are pretty small, considering. Your question still stands, because X-37B is utterly useless. Pentagon was unable to articulate just what they are trying to accomplish with it, hiding behind the secrecy. My answer is: they cannot answer. The X-37 has no purpose. It only exists because some jocks in Air Force brass want a spaceplane real bad.
P.S. For the sake of our country I hope that Boeing transfer some of lessons of X-37 towards their RBS bid. We know that as a company they are capable of such transfers, the poster child being CST-100 reusing many company technologies across departments. However so far there is no evidence of it.
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Anthony
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Thank you Ensign Chekov.
wanttaja
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If the X-37 had a cockpit, I might agree with you. But no one in the upper echelons of the Air Force would get emotionally invested in a space drone.
The X-37 provides much of what the Shuttle was SUPPOSED to provide: Low(er) cost, flexible, re-usable, access to space. It just doesn't haul a whole freight train into orbit or keep the astronaut-pin-factories in business.
Ron Wanttaja
Jim_R
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Jim
I was responding to KSCessnaDriver who said the Air Force "accomplished" something 20 years after the Russians did it. My point was that if I wore Velcro shoes for the first 20 years of my life, then decided to buy a pair of lace-ups, you could claim that it took me 20 years to "accomplish" the task of tying a bow knot on my shoe. But it would be kind of a silly claim.
I don't know about the Orion-lite vehicle being developed, but for at least some of the other commercial "crewed" concept vehicles, the current concept is that there will be no ability for the crew to actively control or pilot the vehicle from inside it. (That's not a crew...that's just organic cargo.)
Then America will catch up with and surpass the Russians re: autonomous flight / landing!!!!!11
zaitcev
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Lite is no more. They went back to the normal one in MPCV, for a couple of reasons. First, the Boeing CST-100 takes over the Lite's taxi functions anyway, it is low risk and on schedule. Second, SLS has excess capacity and you don't have to "lite" Orion in order to fit it on top of Mike Griffin's Corndog Rocket anymore. Third, SLS is the long pole in the tent. They are even going to test-fly MPCV on top of Delta 4H since MPCV paces ahead even if the plan to run Delta's stage in SLS proceeds. Lite was last gasp of the desperate Griffin regime.
zaitcev
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This is a good point, Ron. However...
Manifestly X-37 does nothing of what you listed.
- Cost is depressed by the rapid turnaround and high flight rate. X-37 does nothing to it. When AF took over, they even removed non-toxic propulsion and replaced it with the toxic one. They clearly do not care about rapid turnaround. And just look at the cost of the launch as a proportion to the cost of the program! Air Force even knows about this, which is why RBS. Not X-37 though.
- Flexibility in mission is present, but operational flexibility is abset. X-37 does absolutely nothing for ORS. You still have to plan it 3 years in advance to get a launch slot on Atlas (UFO replacemed set a groundbreaking record by completing signature-to-launch in 2 years, because it was a ******n crush program). If they flew X-37 6 times a year it would be different, but they don't.
- Re-usable... Maybe, but they flew OTV-2 instead of re-flying OTV-1, why is that? And the brass said in plain language at the post-landing conference that they are not interested in reusability, only "returnability".
We all wish that costs of access were reduced, and that flexible, reusable vehicles did it. But X-37 is not it and not moves us in that direction.
You may want to do a compare and contrast between the economics and government of Russia and US. The US is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world, let alone Russia.
FWIW, space travel isn't all it's cracked up to be. Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, we're sending PRIVATE ENTERPRISES into space. We don't need the government to do it anymore.
Private entrerprise will be able to do better in space than NASA did, that's for sure.
SpaceShipOne wnet from drawing board to fruition in 10 years. NASA went to the moon in 1969, AND HASN'T BEEN BACK SINCE.
KSCessnaDriver
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Yup, one has a government which supports a manned space program and one that doesn't. The Russians are at least smart enough to keep using what they have.
bbchien
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Where are de nuk-u-lar wessels?
eMKay
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Why would we waste money on a government program when Elon Musk can do it for 1/20 the cost? Which government is smart again?
Jim_R
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Jim
SpaceX is essentially a government program...just a different kind. Elon Musk would almost certainly not have been able to establish SpaceX as a viable company had NASA not awarded the COTS and follow-on CRS contracts to his company. The stability and legitimacy granted by those government contracts are what has allowed SpaceX to attract investors and other customers.
Take away those government contracts, and SpaceX probably doesn't make it.
This is essentially a public-private partnership. This is not pure-dee private enterprise.
Take away those government contracts, and SpaceX probably doesn't make it.
This is essentially a public-private partnership. This is not pure-dee private enterprise.
Exactly.
Except government wasting money on space travel isn't "smart". Letting private enterprises do it, is.
Jim_R
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I'd tout SpaceX as a poster child for successful performance in spaceflight vs. Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne barely reached 100km suborbital, and that was 8 years ago. SpaceX has put paying customers into orbit, and has a significant backlog of missions to fly.
And for the record, NASA sent crews back to the moon six more times after Apollo 11: Apollo 12 landed in 1969, Apollo 13 flew by in 1970, Apollo 14 and 15 both landed in 1971, and Apollo 16 and 17 both landed in 1972.
NASA has also returned to the moon with a number of unmanned missions since then: Clementine in 1994, Lunar Prospector in 1998, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS in 2009, and GRAIL that just launched last September.
How many private companies have been to the moon since Russia and NASA put their first landers there 46/45 years ago?
If/when private companies ever go to the moon, they'll benefit from the pathfinding that governments did for them years before.
Gmaper
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One of our presidential hopefuls has it all figured out. I'm sure that there will be no impact on the deficit or the budget. 
From: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre80p05k-us-usa-campaign-gingrich-space/
Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich called on Wednesday for a base on the moon and an expanded federal purse for prize money to stimulate private-sector space projects.
"We want Americans to think boldly about the future," Gingrich said during a campaign rally in Florida, where he outlined a space policy initiative that would cut NASA's bureaucracy and expand on private-sector space programs championed by President Barack Obama.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich said.
"We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching," he said.
From: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre80p05k-us-usa-campaign-gingrich-space/
Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich called on Wednesday for a base on the moon and an expanded federal purse for prize money to stimulate private-sector space projects.
"We want Americans to think boldly about the future," Gingrich said during a campaign rally in Florida, where he outlined a space policy initiative that would cut NASA's bureaucracy and expand on private-sector space programs championed by President Barack Obama.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich said.
"We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching," he said.
KSCessnaDriver
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SpaceX is what NASA should be. An organization that is forward thinking and willing to move to new things. I've spoken to their recruiters and been to an information presentation about the company, and while they won't come out and say it, they really want nothing to do with people who have worked for NASA.
zaitcev
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NASA is far from a monolith stuffed by faceless stone-butts. Someone have developed Nautilus, right? I would not shed a tear if Marshall was shut down tomorrow and everyone there fired, but there's more to NASA than that. And I'm sure Elon understands it, even after Bowersox.
Jim_R
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Jim
Almost every successful small startup is successful because of highly talented, highly motivated people, usually guided by some fresh idea or exciting project. SpaceX has all those things, and they've achieved so much partially because their very talented people are willing to work 60-80 hour weeks for months on end.
Almost every successful small business grows out of the entrepreneurial phase and matures into a more traditional, bureaucratic, monolithic company. Aside form Apple, name another company that has managed that transition without losing something along the way.
It will be interesting to see how long they can maintain their current model. Boeing, Lockheed, and all the many dozens of aircraft companies that have been absorbed by them over the years were once nimble, forward-thinking companies, too....