Another X37-B Flight

On Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 11:03:09 AM UTC-4, Rick Jones wrote:
This time around they appear to be a bit more forthcoming as to what
will be happening:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05...b_space_plane/

:-)

I feel like the USAF have put some ex-CIA types on the PR payroll.

Yes lots and lots of cubesats that provide cute little photo selfies of stuffed animals put in space by enterprising college students just hitching a ride. And solar sails for the Planetary Society. And maybe in a future flight we can put up a Leonard Nimoy memorial!

With cover like this, I don't *really* need to get into nitty gritty details about the next generation anti-ASAT technology that allow emergency replacement of recon or comsats in LEO. Possibly in stealth like "birddog" orbits so close to potential enemy sats that any attempt to take out of one "ours" with a KKV, puts one of "theirs" at risk. Or the fact that I need substantial in-orbit time to test such capability.

After all those cubesats and nanosats need not only the ability to return from orbit, but also require high delta-V in order to obtain really cool looking selfies of the earth!

I think I'll put in a request to the USAF to see if I can fly a Brooklyn Bridge model as a cubesat payload on the next X37-B mission! :-)

Boy am I being cynical this week or what?

Dave

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
eb.com...

Could it be that X37 by military is just leftover from NASA's failed
attempts at building a new Shuttle, so once NASA's budgets were cut,
they were effectively tranfered to the military so it could play with
the "space plane" concept and the miliyary has no real use for them but
has the budgets to continue R&D ?

If this thing pans out, wouldn't the military build a bigger X37 to
handle the types of loads that would be of use to them ?

Again, possibly, but it seems to me the current flight profiles don't
really
suggest that:

OTV-1 - 224 days on orbit
OTV-2 - 468 days on orbit
OTV-3 - 1 year, 10 months, 6
OTV-4 - On orbit.

So they're not flying very often at all.

Not so much, but this is an early model. They would want to learn as
much as possible, by flying it, before moving on to an "operational"
version. Also, current launch costs for this thing aren't terribly
cheap. As launch costs come down, perhaps it, or its successor, will
fly more often.


True, but so far it's been what, 5 years? They're not developing very
quickly.

My guess is that among other things they are testing materials for long term
use.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

That's why I'm having trouble figuring out what the advantage of
the X-37B is.

I'm thinking it clearly has to be something you NEED to return.
Otherwise,
why not just toss it when done? But it's not something you need to fly
frequently.

It wouldn't surprise me of X-37B was being used to investigate possible
uses of an operational vehicle. Air Force has wanted such a vehicle
since the 1960s (e.g. X-20 Dyna-Soar and Blue Gemini), but has never
gotten one to "play with" until now. It's an "exciting" solution
looking for any sort of problem to solve, IMHO.

Oh, I think it's definitely investigating the uses of some sort of
operational vehicle.

I'm just curious what missions take 100s of days to perform.

(obConspiracy theory: It's on orbit waiting to 'trade' with alien spacecraft
and we're not sure of their return timetable so we launch it, wait for them
to show up, give them what they want, they give us what we want, then it
lands, and we prepare for the next mission :-)



Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 10:03:47 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
If you have a KKV you don't slow it down - so its heat signature is radically reduced compared to a space shuttle type entry.


For the sake of argument, let's say that your KKV absorbed all of the
heat which it is exposed to,

You obviously haven't read the articles in the relevant AIAA journals regarding stealthy warheads.

The idea of a kinetic kill vehicle is to RETAIN KINETIC ENERGY. That means you don't want to get rid of heat energy, you don't want to absorb heat energy, you want to NOT GENERATE heat energy in the first place!

The wind tunnel and shock tube data that has been published indicates that you can reduce THE GENERATION OF HEAT by a factor of 10 compared to say a sphere. This is achieved by a pointy objects that have the ability to retain their shape even when under intense heat and stress. Unpublished data likely shows you can do better than this. The point is, KKV from orbit are possible with a reduction by a factor of 3, so a factor of 10 proves the concept can be made to work physically.

So, along a given trajectory a hollow sphere is slowed to subsonic speeds as it descends, and a solid iron sphere is slowed to twice the speed of sound, and a solid tungsten sphere to five times the speed of sound. These are not especially powerful. That means they lose 99.8%, 99.2% and 95.3% of their energy respectively. These objects could be seen as warheads if they were as massive as warheads. The smaller they are, the more they look like the run of the mill objects that get picked up at a rate of 80,000 times a day - about 1 per second. Smaller objects get even more signatures. At some point you have a cut off.

Now, with the right shape, these objects lose 1/10th the energy over their trajectory, and all lose roughly 10% of their kinetic energy over their trajectory, and all arrive at over at over 7 km/sec as a consequence. These ARE very dangerous.

From a heat signature standpoint this means a 10 kg object loses as much heat over its trajectory as a 1 kg object.

A 10 kg needle like shape that does better losing only 1% of its energy to the atmosphere, arrives at nearly 8 km/sec and produces the heat signature of a 100 gram rock! So, it looks nothing like a conventional warhead and easily made out to be an unusually fast meteorite.

Lets consider tungsten as the rod material.

Two 1 meter long by 22.4 mm diameter rods joined at their bases with deep grooves along their length acting as a fins, and paying attention to the transition details between the two cones, should result in a controllable device that deposits between 1/100th and 1/10th their energy in the atmosphere as they descend to the surface.

Filling much of the volume near the center with guidance hardware and propellant for MEMS rockets, reduces mass by half and gives us a finished product.

This means they arrive at between 7 km/sec and 8 km/sec and the 10 kg object looks like a rock that weighs 100 grams to maybe 1 kg.

With a 2.1 m long and 1.2 m diameter payload bay and 5,000 kg payload, we are weight limited not size limited with this design. So, we have the ability to put 500 of these 10 kg rods in the bay.

impossibility since it's going to radiate some heat.

Some, but a KKV is shaped not to disturb the air anyway. Its long needle like shape means that to a thermographic sensor geared to standard warheads it will look like an unusually fast conventional meteorite of very small size. Given the shielding that plasma affords, the needle like shape will be hidden in the plasma plume. It will seem by radar and infrared sensors like a very fast very small meteorite on an unusual orbit. If you are planning on hitting a target you might very well have 'expert' astronomers on site for another reason to salt the region with 'evidence' they carried in to make the phoney story of a meteorite stick in the public mind.

This is very much like what happened in Russia.


It's still going
to be compressing the air that it is traveling through,

Yes, and the frontal area determines how much air gets compressed. A long needle like shape has been favoured for stealthy war head design in the literature for this reason.

which is going
to radiate heat.

Yes, but how much? A KKV must retain at least 2/3 of its kinetic energy to be effective. This means a long rod like shape. Stretching this to a narrow needle lets you retain 9/10th the energy or more.

It's *still* going to show up on IR sensors.

Of course it is. You have obviously never worked these sensors have you? They pick up all sorts of things! How do you tell a warhead from a meteorite? There are 80,000 objects detected every day. Operators reject most of these. There are other false positives as well.

If the heat signature your KKV is putting out looks a lot like 80,000 other signals that are being rejected anyway, you stand a very good chance of attacking a target without raising any issues.

Anyone who has actually worked in this area knows that there have been professional papers written on the subject of KKV and this inability to reliably detect them, and the ability to confuse tens of thousands of false positives with an attack, is an argument NOT to deploy them, since it makes things considerably less stable.

The last time we came close to World War Three was due to a faulty IR sensor that thought IR reflections off unusual cloud formations was evidence of a US attack on the USSR. Fortunately for all of us, the operator in charge that day refused to follow orders and launch a counter attack.

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

We cannot be so naive we will always be so lucky.

B-2 Stealth Bombers exist and would be able to do the job cheaper and
easier.

Only if the USA wanted to be identified as the aggressor!

http://www.industrytap.com/b2-stealt...y-anymore/7881

Only an extremely naive person would think that the USA would not attempt to maintain and use an ability to strike targets in ways that seem like natural events (a meteorite) or industrial accidents (an explosion) or the result of terrorists that don't really exist (9/11).

http://www.space.com/19802-russian-m...st-photos.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-15960456
http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
(obConspiracy theory: It's on orbit waiting to 'trade' with alien
spacecraft and we're not sure of their return timetable so we launch
it, wait for them to show up, give them what they want, they give us
what we want, then it lands, and we prepare for the next mission :-)

Is that so the military can interact with the aliens first, to ask for
the "Big Gun" before the aliens have a chance to land and be given a
glass of water?

rick jones
--
Process shall set you free from the need for rational thought.
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

On Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 8:01:12 PM UTC-4, Rick Jones wrote:
"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
(obConspiracy theory: It's on orbit waiting to 'trade' with alien
spacecraft and we're not sure of their return timetable so we launch
it, wait for them to show up, give them what they want, they give us
what we want, then it lands, and we prepare for the next mission :-)

Is that so the military can interact with the aliens first, to ask for
the "Big Gun" before the aliens have a chance to land and be given a
glass of water?

rick jones
--
Process shall set you free from the need for rational thought.
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...


https://www.corbettreport.com/faking...orld-into-war/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgxn4ZzN2aY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM

In article ,
says...

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 10:03:47 AM UTC-4, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
If you have a KKV you don't slow it down - so its heat signature is radically reduced compared to a space shuttle type entry.


For the sake of argument, let's say that your KKV absorbed all of the
heat which it is exposed to,

You obviously haven't read the articles in the relevant AIAA journals regarding stealthy warheads.

Have any cites for that?

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...

"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
aweb.com...


If the goal is to be able to have a vehicle orbit earth and launch a
weapon on demand, then this is the ticket. Consider X37 has autonomy of
a month. Every month, military launches one as the other one returns.
This means they have constant availability of a weapon that can be
launched from orbit which can touch any region of the planet. That is a
capability the USA doesn't have.

The thing is, most (all? I'd have to look it up) of the X-37B flights have
been measured in the 100s of days.

That's what I can't figure out. You're not getting fast turn-around on
stuff. It's not like, "fly, land, tweak, refly", etc.


You want long term flight to collect data so you know what to tweak.

Agreed, but a year plus flight seems a bit long, unless of course as I
suggested elsewhere what you're testing is long-term exposure of materials
to space.

And of course it helps to fly more often so you can tweak more often.

Basically if they were flying much shorter flights (say 30-100 days each) I
might understand this better.



In my mind, when you're starting to talk 100s of days for missions and
reflying once every other year or so, it seems to me you might as well go
with a full expendable.


Nope. That involves a lot of specialized engineering.

Huh? How does using something fully expendable (i.e. what we do with pretty
much every other satellite that flies for over a year) require any more
special engineering than not? It would seem to me to be simpler since you no
longer are restrained by the shape and size of your re-entry body.



That's why I'm having trouble figuring out what the advantage of the X-37B
is.

I'm thinking it clearly has to be something you NEED to return.
Otherwise,
why not just toss it when done? But it's not something you need to fly
frequently.


I think most sensors fit this model.

Right, I suspect it's some sort of sensor platform, the question is what and
what's the value of returning it?
I think we're all agreed it's probably not visual (at least if it is, not
pointed to Earth).
Which means some other wavelength.
And possibly something you want to measure the impact of weather over the
course or a year or more (this would explain the 400+ day flight limits).
And costly enough that it's worth being constrained to a fairly small
payload and being returned. Otherwise for the same mass you might launch
something larger and just abandon it when done.



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

I'd go to Scottsdale and talk to Richard Lloyd after mastering his two textbooks on the subject. That's the best source.

http://www.amazon.com/Conventional-E.../dp/1563472554

http://www.amazon.com/Tactical-Warhe..._bxgy_14_img_y

In article ,
says...

I'd go to Scottsdale and talk to Richard Lloyd after mastering his two textbooks on the subject. That's the best source.

http://www.amazon.com/Conventional-E.../dp/1563472554

http://www.amazon.com/Tactical-Warhe..._bxgy_14_img_y

You claimed there were AIAA papers. These look like books on
(explosive) warheads, which are only tangentially related to kinetic
kill vehicles, which don't need explosives at all. :-(

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer