X-37B orbit identified

They still don't know what exactly the X-37B does, but they apparently
now know where it's at in space at any given time:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2742/...ystery-remains
This will give them a baseline to work with if or when it starts doing
its orbital maneuvers.

Pat

On 5/24/2010 11:07 PM, Anonymous wrote:


It's obviously some sort of weapons platform, probably a prototype for
some sort of nuclear bomber designed to circumvent the FOBS-treaty.

Due to orbital mechanics, unless you were to put a lot of them into
orbit simultaneously (probably into polar orbit at that) you could have
a very long wait till it got into a position to attack a particular
target on the earth's surface, in the same way that the Shuttle has a
window for landing at either the Cape or Edwards AFB that it can't
reenter outside of.
When the program got going it was indeed going to carry kinetic energy
warheads on top of the wings, as early Boeing artwork showed:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077821/
But again, that would have taken a lot of them in orbit at once if you
wanted to get any sort of quick response time attack capability.

Pat

Anonymous wrote:
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
They still don't know what exactly the X-37B does, but they apparently
now know where it's at in space at any given time:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2742/...ystery-remains
This will give them a baseline to work with if or when it starts doing
its orbital maneuvers.

It's obviously some sort of weapons platform, probably a prototype for
some sort of nuclear bomber designed to circumvent the FOBS-treaty.

Um, interesting observation, given the orbital cycles would appear to keep it
over ocean 1/2 of its orbit. Unless this thing is designed for MARV'ed
warheads it would have a hard time putting anything on target other than the
Amazon delta or Australia. (Well there is the mid-east I suppose) Given that
it orbits over the mid-east and central Asia including Pakistan and
Afghanistan it doesn't require any further 'rocket science' to figure out what
the intent is.

It will be 'fun' for the amateurs to track this. Seems to me that the main
reason for having something like the X37B is to do fancy on-orbit maneuvers
because, unlike conventional satellites, it's ok to consume up gobs of OMS
fuel since it can be easily replenished via a simple return to earth.

Tasking on demand or low-cost re-tasking if you will. Right now that's a big
deal. To me, the satellite bus idea seems to hold good merit as well...
But as a strategic nuke platform, (besides being a treaty violation) not really.

Dave