...Military Space Plane (X-37b) to Launch February 26

X-37b
http://space.skyrocket.de/index_fram..._sdat/x-37.htm


February 26, 2009: A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket to launch the
Pentagon's X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle space plane prototype from Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches..._schedule.html


"The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is similar to the space shuttle, except it's
about a fourth the size and unmanned. The OTV can return from space on its own,
said Lt. Col. Kevin Walker, an Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office program
manager. "
"The X-37 program, originally a NASA initiative, was transferred to the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2004. The Air Force's X-37B program builds
upon the early development and testing conducted by NASA, DARPA and the Air
Force Research Laboratory."
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123032226


Gee, I wonder what else was transferred from NASA to the military under
Bush?


WASHINGTON The U.S. Air Force has decided not to adopt NASAs orphaned X-33
and X-34 experimental rockets or take on a greater role in the agencys X-37
space
vehicle program, according to industry and government sources.
X-37, meanwhile, remains a funded NASA program with limited Air Force
involvement.
An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment on the matter
http://www.space.com/news/military_space_010905.html



......ohmygosh....they lied to us about the X-37! Go figure.
So what really happened to the X-33?


NASA Concludes X-33 Engine Test Series with
90-Second Burn

"There were no anomalies," Foerman said. "It looks like it was a good test.
What happens next with the linear aerospike engines, along with the
rest of the X-33 flight hardware, is still not clear. The U.S. Air Force
has expressed an interest in taking over the orphaned program,
but has made no formal commitment to do so.

NASA spokesman James Cast said the U.S. space agency
continues to discuss the X-33 program's future with the Air Force
http://www.space.com/spacenews/x33test_080701.html


Huh!


So, all these decades of trying to build a SSO, and it all ends
up getting militarized. Oh well, guess that's the future for NASA
and manned space flight.

To help the Pentagon build a rapid reaction force, and march a squad
of poor obedient Marines to the top of an old leaky Atlas, and
surprise the hell out of some future Osama?



Jonathan



s

In the previous article, jonathan wrote:
Gee, I wonder what else was transferred from NASA to the
military under Bush?

If you want a list, just write down all the stuff that actually
works. That's the stuff NASA doesn't do.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am
_|70|___=}- J.D. Baldwin |quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / |to deny under oath that I ever made it.-T. Lehrer
***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------

You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"J.D. Baldwin" wrote in message
...

In the previous article, jonathan wrote:
Gee, I wonder what else was transferred from NASA to the
military under Bush?

If you want a list, just write down all the stuff that actually
works. That's the stuff NASA doesn't do.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am
_|70|___=}- J.D. Baldwin |quite prepared not only to retract it, but
also
\ / |to deny under oath that I ever made it.-T.
Lehrer
***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------

On Dec 16, 3:55�am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:
You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

I still believe they didn't send more because they were so cheap. NASA
always seems to look for the most expensive means to do something, and
after they failed try something even more expensive and less likely to
succeed.
I'm a firm believer in space technology, but I also believe that the NASA
driven approach should be abandoned. The most important thing at the moment
is reducing the cost to orbit, and that's where the money should go (but I
don't believe NASA has spend any money on that in decades). Once NASA was a
good thing, nowadays it does little for lots of money.


wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:55?am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:
You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

"Stefan Diekmann" wrote in message
...
I still believe they didn't send more because they were so cheap. NASA
always seems to look for the most expensive means to do something, and
after they failed try something even more expensive and less likely to
succeed.

They're cheap because they're limited in what they can do.

They've accomplished their goals.

Besides taking more pretty pictures, what valuable science would additional
copies bring?

It's like arguing we fly copies of Explorer I because it was so cheap.


I'm a firm believer in space technology, but I also believe that the NASA
driven approach should be abandoned. The most important thing at the
moment is reducing the cost to orbit, and that's where the money should go
(but I don't believe NASA has spend any money on that in decades). Once
NASA was a good thing, nowadays it does little for lots of money.


wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:55?am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:
You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more




--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

"Stefan Diekmann" wrote:

I still believe they didn't send more because they were so cheap. NASA
always seems to look for the most expensive means to do something, and
after they failed try something even more expensive and less likely to
succeed.

Yet somehow, NASA suceeds more than it fails. This suggests your
model is flawed. Editorially speaking, I'd say deeply flawed.

The most important thing at the moment is reducing the cost to orbit, and
that's where the money should go (but I don't believe NASA has spend any
money on that in decades).

Spending money just to spend money very rarely reduces costs. This
goes doubly for things like the cost of space acess where the problem
isn't that we aren't spending enough money.

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

Actually, duplicating them on a production line means spending
$MEGABUCKS^2 creating an assembly line - which means they aren't cheap
any more. Once you've created the assembly line, you can reduce costs
by producing by the gross lot - but in the case of the MER rovers, you
won't reduce costs as much as you think because most of the costs come
from QA and testing not materials and assembly labor.

And then once you've spent all that money without reducing costs all
that much, you're faced with the problem that MER rovers are useless
little toys for broad exploration. Their EDL systems can only reach a
small portion of the Martian surface, and the their science package is
limited and designed to answer only certain specific questions.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

AGreed in basic terms, but there comes a time when you need to ask about the
next step, and is building more rovers really the way to spend the money if
you want to learn more. You need to do more insitu tests. You need to take
along other disciplines and I'd suspect that landing as they did is not
going to give a very good machine at the end of the day, considering what
they want it to be able to do.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
wrote in message
...
On Dec 16, 3:55?am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:
You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

On Dec 16, 9:42*am, " wrote:

in typical *nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

You aren't understanding the way this works. If we were seriously
going to be exploring to prepare for a landing that is surely what we
would do. (In fact, that's what we did do for the moon in the 1960's
with the Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter programs, each of which
had several coordinated missions). But this isn't about exploring
different spots to see where the best and most interesting places to
land and explore further with humans would be (any such work would be
in the future, once Congress actually starts seriously funding the
Constellation program). This is about answering as many different
questions as possible on a given budget. Spirit and Opportunity
answered the big top-line questions that they were supposed to: was
there ever liquid water on Mars? (Answered affirmatively by the two
rovers.) With more rovers, you could get more detailed and better
answers to that particular question, or you could send a different set
of instruments on a different platform (to support these different
sensors) and try to answer a different top-line question (like looking
for actual evidence of life, say). And all of the people who are
working on questions other than evidence of water in the Martian past
want a chance to get their questions answered. So instead of building
more rovers to better explore that question we get new craft designed
to give a general answer to other questions- say about Titan, or
Europa, or the Martian atmosphere.

The rovers don't really work well as a general purpose bus. Spirit and
Opportunity would be poor platforms for looking for life, as an
example. In order to do that properly you need to sterilize the craft
before launching (so you can be sure you aren't finding earth microbes
that have hitched a ride), and the rovers were not designed for that-
and you really need to design the electronics to survive being baked
like that, or you just built a very expensive brick. In addition, the
air bag system would probably be dropped for future missions- it
turned out to be far more complicated than expected (in particular,
they tried to avoid the need for a steerable braking rocket system
with the airbags, but the mass of the rovers meant that they had to
have such a system anyway- if you have to have a steerable braking
rocket you might as well soft land). So it was pretty much inevitable
that the next generation of rover would not be like Spirit and
Opportunity.

People have looked at using a common bus design to support multiple
missions with different sensors to answer different questions, but it
turns out to not be a great solution. Look at the history of the
Planetary Observer program for reasons why. Or Netlander, which didn't
even get that far.

Chris Manteuffel

On Dec 16, 9:42*am, " wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:55 am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:

You lot are more cynical than I am.

Brian

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical *nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

Actually, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory build the MER Spirit and
Opportunity.
JPL is under contract from NASA. So is JHUAPL, who built and operate
New Horizons and did the NEAR mission to Eros