News - Air Force developing unmanned space plane - X-37B

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:19:12 -0500, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

The huge downside is that when the USAF is in charge, it will take a lot
longer for the lessons learned to find their way into commercial
applications.

Not necessarily. Look at the composite materials technology that
Boeing is putting to splendid use with the 787 annihilating Airbus's
competing A350.

Brian

Brian Thorn writes:

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:19:12 -0500, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

The huge downside is that when the USAF is in charge, it will take a lot
longer for the lessons learned to find their way into commercial
applications.

Not necessarily. Look at the composite materials technology that
Boeing is putting to splendid use with the 787 annihilating Airbus's
competing A350.

I think knowledge transfer within a company is not what Jeff meant.
Especially if the knowledge is gained with money payed by the tax-payer
but not made public. This reeks quite a bit like socialism.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Henry Spencer wrote:

Moreover, in such a case, whether you get the spacecraft back is really a
very secondary issue -- maneuvering warheads don't need anything like a
reusable spacecraft wrapped around them, and indeed don't want one, since
a modern warhead reentry is very different from a spacecraft reentry -- so
developing a reusable spacecraft for the purpose is quite superfluous.


The concept would be that the spacecraft could maneuver to targets at
considerable distance from its orbital track, thereby reducing the
number needed for global coverage.
at the end of it's deployment period, it would land for refurbishment
and relaunch.
The thing that hits me is that this widget makes no sense from a
economic point of view. A vehicle that requires a Atlas V launch to get
into orbit is anything but cheap, and due to its reusability the total
useful payload is greatly reduced.
I'd assumed they were working on some sort of reusable first stage to go
with this, but that's apparently not the case.
About the only reasonable mission for this other than my speculation is
a reconnaissance mission that brings film back.
Its cargo bay isn't going to be big enough to hold a very large camera,
so its ability in that regard isn't going to be great.
It ways so much that you lose a lot of payload over what you could
launch on a stock Atlas V, which means that you had better have some
very good reason to get your payload back, which frankly throws me as to
what that payload is.
One thing you could do is grab satellites out of orbit "You Only Live
Twice" style, but that's not going to considered a friendly act by the
country that owns them.
One of the only other missions it could have is a crew shuttle to some
sort of space station, as that would require the ability to return.

Pat

Jochem Huhmann wrote:

Especially since the USAF may already have a bird that did something
along these lines not long ago (remember Black Star of AvLeak fame?)
and there's not much information about it, too.

Yeah, nothing but rumours, but I'm wondering if the USAF is just
desperately pondering to capitalize on work already being done and
shelved...




They've wanted a small spaceplane since the late 70's, but what exactly
they want it for is a mystery.

Pat

Brian Thorn wrote:

Not necessarily. Look at the composite materials technology that
Boeing is putting to splendid use with the 787 annihilating Airbus's
competing A350.




That's true; that was a direct offshoot of their work on the B-2's outer
wings, as was the CAD process used on the 777.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
...It would be a remarkably stupid thing to do. Not
that I think Washington is incapable of doing remarkably stupid things,
but this seems a little too blatant.

You show me some logic or finesse on the part of the administration that
said "ABM treaty... what ABM treaty?"...

While this administration's approach to international law is sometimes
less than laudable, in that case their behavior was proper: they followed
the procedure prescribed by the treaty itself for withdrawing from it.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
Jochem Huhmann wrote:
Not necessarily. Look at the composite materials technology that
Boeing is putting to splendid use with the 787 annihilating Airbus's
competing A350.

I think knowledge transfer within a company is not what Jeff meant.
Especially if the knowledge is gained with money payed by the tax-payer
but not made public. This reeks quite a bit like socialism.

The word you want is actually "cronyism" -- the combination of the worst
properties of socialism and capitalism, where the market is nominally free
but in fact the fix is in and only the government's buddies benefit.

(Cronyism is also what many protestors against "globalization" are
actually ticked off about.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

While this administration's approach to international law is sometimes
less than laudable, in that case their behavior was proper: they followed
the procedure prescribed by the treaty itself for withdrawing from it.



But in withdrawing from it, all they did was get a potential new arms
race going.
China only had a few ICBMs, now it will be encouraged to make hundreds
of them with MIRV warheads to defeat any proposed ABM system by weight
of numbers. North Korea doesn't have enough warheads to make them a
viable missile threat, as any offensive action on their part would
result in pretty much instantaneous destruction of their country.
These leaves Pakistan as the only other potential threat this system is
to deal with, and Pakistan hasn't fielded ICBMs yet, and has its
missiles primarily aimed at India, whom we are now giving new nuclear
technology to, further destabilizing the region...while complaining
about rogue states building nuclear weapons.
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. In fact,
neither hand even know what it itself is doing.

Pat

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:59:28 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



Henry Spencer wrote:

While this administration's approach to international law is sometimes
less than laudable, in that case their behavior was proper: they followed
the procedure prescribed by the treaty itself for withdrawing from it.



But in withdrawing from it, all they did was get a potential new arms
race going.

It was going anyway, except they were the only ones racing, and
cheating.

typically flawed and long discredited arguments against missile
defense snipped

Rand Simberg wrote:

It was going anyway, except they were the only ones racing, and
cheating.



Yeah, they're real terrors in the ICBM business... they've got 20, you know:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/icbm/index.html
Plus, the they have 24 SLBMS:
http://fas.org/nuke/guide/china/slbm/index.html
But of course our ABM system won't be able to deal with those, as they
probably won't be polite enough to shoot them at us from the north Pacific.

Pat