SunlitZelkova

Yes. He goes over other options too (realistic alternatives exist to putting engines on the Moon). EDIT- This only for moving the Earth away from the Sun though. It would not be possible to move it to another solar system without killing everything on it and making it uninhabitable, at which point it might have made more sense to build ships and travel to a star system with a rocky planet (still living in domes, but less effort than moving the planet).

It is classified research. It doesn’t even matter if it is likely that other nations already have it, it is classified and can’t be revealed no matter what. Corona can not/could not expose materials to space. The materials are being brought back to see what happened to them. It’s a testing program, and has nothing to do with building “reusable satellites”. Why do you find our explanations weak? Ours are actually supported by evidence. In contrast, yours are pure speculation. I am not trying to be hostile in saying that. But your argument appears as though it is “this can’t be this and thus must be this” and no more. It is not convincing.

There are ground systems designed to detect nuclear explosions based on seismic data, radiation sensing, and also the very obvious loss of communication with the radar sites would alert them too. It would not be feasible and the radars themselves might detect the X-37s and manage to report them prior to destruction. Bureaucracies and government agencies don’t operate based on logic. The exact same logic was applied to the Shuttle- “there is no reason to use the Shuttle over expendable rockets, it must be a secret weapons system!”- yet contrived reasons for the use of the Shuttle existed within the US government.

Kinda wacky that the recovery ship, USS Portland, is equipped with a laser weapon system. It feels somewhat arrogant saying this when I’m only 21, but we are truly living in the future. Also lol at USS Portland (Oregon) having a Sasquatch team on board. OH MY GOODNESS. Don’t know if y’all continued watching after splashdown, but Bill Nelson just called Artemis III “Apollo III” in the post-event interview.

There are only two pads at Vandenberg. Two X-37Cs are not going to be an effective strike force compared to SLBMs or stealth bombers (if the goal is first strike). Grouped X-37Cs (launches successively, more than two on orbit), would also be useless, as they will be detected by radar just the same as an SLBM launched from short range, and can be tracked while in orbit. It is also incredibly public, and no one likes to make it known exactly what portions of their nuclear force are on alert and which are not. They are completely garbage as a second strike/retaliatory force. It’s hidden subs and hardened ICBMs vs. dinky electronic finned thingies that can be knocked out by high altitude nuclear detonations. Just because something happened or did not happen in the past does not mean it is happening now.

Good luck!

This is more or less the same logic used by the Soviets when they deduced that the Space Shuttle was a nuclear strike platform, and yet the Space Shuttle was not a nuclear strike platform, despite expendable rockets and cheap Spacelab derived, Salyut style stations being more useful for the type of science they wanted to do. As I said, our government is not that smart. They don’t play 4D chess moves on their adversaries by beginning development of a space nuclear strike system while simultaneously signing nuclear arms reduction treaties, they do things like saying they want to use Shuttle components to speed up the development of an SLHV, only for a much more economical SHLV to pop up by the time the government Shuttle derived one is ready. To put into perspective why we are so opposed to your theory, it is as though we said there are no reasons why Oryol and ROSS have been pushed so far into the future, and therefore Russia must have no intention to actually build Oryol and ROSS and therefore all plans and announcements related to it are lies. It is rather obvious the future Russian crewed space projects have issues and therefore suffer delays, and it is unthinkable that Russia would give up its piloted spaceflight capability and therefore announcements about ROSS and Oryol are not lies (at least not all of them). Likewise, placing materials and equipment in space and studying how they fare over a period of multiple years is a perfectly sound explanation from the USAF as to what the X-37B does, and it is unthinkable that the US would abandon the Outer Space Treaty, and therefore the X-37B is not a nuclear weapons test platform-cum-orbital strike system.

What would Mars need to be like, or what would have had to happen to it, for it to have an atmosphere “roughly 10% as dense as Earth’s”? That’s a direct quote from the Spaceflight History Blog, as I had no idea where to find the exact hypothetical numbers put forward prior to Mariner 4. I want to write an alternate history using the winged lander designs of the 50s and early 60s. I am wondering if the characteristics of Mars could be altered to realistically have the atmosphere needed for those designs, or if I would just need to hand wave it.

I think this should be renamed as the Science and Engineering News Thread.

Big enough for a brig?

Very exciting! Some questions and thoughts come to mind- -We know Polaris Mission III will be the first crewed Starship mission, so… -Are there any potential differences between the first iterations of crew Starship for Polaris Mission III, and the crew Starship for dearMoon? If not… -I wonder how soon dearMoon would then come after Polaris Mission III. Perhaps Polaris may inadvertently allow for a glimpse into a more realistic dearMoon launch date?

I thought it was supposed to remain on orbit indefinitely…

Actually it would be X-37D, X-37C is a proposed crew variant. http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/spacecraft-design/boeing-x-37c/

They already get the Sentinel ICBM program. Despite the controversy around whether ICBMs are even necessary anymore (from both a disarmament and nuclear modernization view), it’s most ardent supporters in Congress just happen to be in the states with ICBM builders and where ICBMs are stationed.

It's kinda cool that the two electronics suppliers in the Portland area are like 15 minutes away from me though Actually, checking a little further, one of them is literally in my neighborhood. I'll be very curious to see what their design is. SpaceX is an obvious choice for one of the landers, so the NT's main competitor will be the Dynetics led team. Pork aside, do y'all think they will actually come up with something reasonably useful and innovative this time (despite the pork and associated setbacks caused by it), or will we get a rehash of the original NT lander, with all of its glaring inefficiencies and anachronisms?

It is not just that idea alone, he is claiming that the idea that the X-37B is a nuclear weapons platform is more plausible than the explanation that the X-37B is being used for spacecraft materials/equipment tests for future intelligence gathering satellites, and that said known fact that the X-37B is used for spacecraft materials/equipment tests somehow does not make sense and is implausible.

I’m not sure if you are missing what he is alluding to or not, but to spell it out plainly he is stating that the X-37B is being used to test the longevity of nuclear weapons in space, with an eye towards evolving the X-37B into a full fledged orbital bombardment system.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20221208_04/ The name of Japan’s de facto air force, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (航空自衛隊, kōkūjieitai), will be changed to Japan Air and Space Self-Defense Force (航空宇宙自衛隊, kōkū-uchū-jieitai) in 2023. The JASDF formed its Space Operations Squadron in 2020. It has a space surveillance radar that is supposed to either be built or already exists in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and will conduct space domain awareness operations. It will work closely with the USSF and JAXA. Their own satellite (and thus Japan’s first military satellite) will be launched around 2026. Because Japan can’t legally have a military after World War II, it instead has the Self-Defense Forces, which in legal terms makes it like a glorified police force and thus ok under the constitution.

Such a system already exists actually! @DDE @K^2 https://www.leonardo.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/the-strales-76mm-system-with-dart-guided-ammunition The manufacturers of the DART guided 76mm rounds for the OTO Melara 76mm claim it is still cheaper than SAMs. Colombia has bought a bunch of them, to give you an idea of how fiscally easy it is to procure. It has a 40G maneuver limit, utilizes a combination of canards on the rotating forward half of the shell and fixed fins on the rear half to maneuver, uses command line-of-sight all the way to the target, utilizing the Ka-band for its radio guidance. I think land-based large caliber anti-aircraft artillery is a bad idea though. These don’t have a self-destruct system like a SAM, which would either result in bombs raining down on friendlies or the planting of mines on one’s own territory if it misses. Another reason I don’t think we will necessarily see widespread adoption of large caliber AA over small caliber is that it is not as great against aircraft compared to MANPADS. Why build guns and shells when we can just build a few more of the tube thingies we’re giving to our dudes in the bushes? I have to wonder though, if Italy had adopted the OTOMATIC SPAAG that utilized the 76mm, would we see them being sent off to *that place* today? Considering the speed of *those slow targets that are a hassle in that place*, the fire rate of the 76mm (120 rpm) should be more than enough to suffice.

I don’t know about the sources of that, but in any case, there are alternatives. CNN proposed the 1000km range indigenous cruise missile that was teased around October could have been used. They appear to have pulled that idea out of nowhere (on their own), but it is plausible.

This is epic.

The X-37B had its first flight literally in the same month and year New START was signed (April 2010). Having read much about the contrasting policies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in the 60s, I can tell you for sure that the US did not play some sort of 32D chess move to push nuclear arms control to the brink, over several administrations. Our government is not that smart.

I would, but it’s basically constantly cloudy in Oregon and Washington until March

Yes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3_Unit_2 They may not have the confidence in their shipbuilding industry to build the proper tracking and recovery ships.

I said physically possible, not “circumstantially” possible, or possible based on evidence. I.e. like how a crewed Mars landing last year is physically possible, yet based on evidence, it is impossible. Writing about all the lengths the US government would need to go to to implement a hypothetical fake Moon landing conspiracy can be done within the laws of physics, but there is no evidence that happened, and there is evidence that the Moon landings did happen, and so is pointless. EDIT- I will add that kerbiloid is making his argument based on physics alone, so what I am trying to point out with my fake Moon landing example is that just because something is within the laws of physics does not mean it is plausible or worth discussion. To put it simply- it’s silly. There is no evidence that the X-37B is being used as a test platform for nuclear weapons or will be turned into a strike system in the future. That’s the answer. Things are proven as fact when there is evidence to support them, not because no evidence against them exists. EDIT- I will add that it is fact that the X-37B is a long duration materials test platform. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104539/x-37b-orbital-test-vehicle/ “The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.“