The X37 is coming home!

[Frozen_Heart]

What's with the biohazard suits?

[andrew123]

What's with the biohazard suits?

It's because of the toxic cryogenic fuel. :)

[Simon Ross]

Given that you people are actually paying millions of dollars of your own money for this thing to be in orbit for the last 2 years, maybe you kinda deserve an answer as to what the hell the thing is doing up there ?

But hey..It's only your money

Simon

[AngelLestat]

Oh, I dint see that there was another clone thread a lot older than mine.

Well if they keep the mission secret, I imagine they was not doing nothing good up there...

The thing that still can not understand is what advantage this design has against dragon2?

The farings to enclose those wings are so big that the aerodynamic lost is a lot. Being able to land without fuel is not enoght to give any ballance to the competition.

Maybe thanks to the wings the heat shield may stand more trips. I dont know.

[Nibb31]

What's with the biohazard suits?

The RCS uses hypergolic propellant. Nasty stuff.

[Nibb31]

The thing that still can not understand is what advantage this design has against dragon2?

The X-37 was flying 4 years ago. Dragon 1 wasn't. Dragon 2 still isn't.

The USAF didn't pay for it, they got it for free when NASA decided they wanted to cancel it.

The farings to enclose those wings are so big that the aerodynamic lost is a lot. Being able to land without fuel is not enoght to give any ballance to the competition.

What competition ? It's a top secret USAF X-project. There is no competition.

[AngelLestat]

ah ok, a huge mistake with the dreamchase, for a moment I thought that this was the boing version in that previous competition.

I forget that boing had the capsule model.

[Tommygun]

What's with the biohazard suits?

They are using H2O2 (hydrazine) with Jp-8 jet fuel in orbit.

Pure hydrazine will burn eyes, lungs and skin with just its fumes.

At higher levels it will cause your clothes and skin to combust.

Given that you people are actually paying millions of dollars of your own money for this thing to be in orbit for the last 2 years, maybe you kinda deserve an answer as to what the hell the thing is doing up there ?

But hey..It's only your money

Simon

I think they forgot where they parked it.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Tommygun

[Guest]

H2O2 isn't hydrazine. It's hydrogen peroxide. Nasty stuff too when concentrated. High Test Peroxide (HTP) can be used as monopropellant.

Hydrazine is H2NNH2

[Tommygun]

H2O2 isn't hydrazine. It's hydrogen peroxide. Nasty stuff too when concentrated. High Test Peroxide (HTP) can be used as monopropellant.

Hydrazine is H2NNH2

Sorry you're right, my dyslexia causes my visual memory to do weird word substitutions.

[Redshift OTF]

It's an interesting mystery. I don't get the re-usable nature of the craft. All the advantages of re-usability are lost by the fact that you need a bigger rocket to get this into space with its payload in the first place. Its only real advantage is it can pick up a sensitive payload from space and deliver it back to Earth. Perhaps it is used to deliver test stealth satellites to and from orbit so engineers can look at how the payload has survived two years in space. After all, has anyone tracked what it delivered and or picked up from space?

[Kryten]

Nothing, as far as anyone can tell. It would hardly need to stay two years just to drop something off, either.

[rtxoff]

It must be some piece of equipment/experiment which has a limited operation time and is precious enough to be worth to be retrieved back to earth.

IMO most probably some very sophisticated spy equipment which allows something like face recognition from orbit. The limited operation time is because the equipment itself for example uses up cooling liquid, also the nature of such a mission requires regular orbit changes which is using fuel.

[Idobox]

The USAF didn't pay for it, they got it for free when NASA decided they wanted to cancel it.

I didn't know, that changes everything.

I thought they had designed it, so I was looking for reasons to have a spaceplane rather than a capsule, but if you assume they used it because it was available, the question is much simpler.

They want to keep stuff in LEO for a long time and then get it back. It's too long for manufacture, so it must be testing long term exposure of components.

It must be some piece of equipment/experiment which has a limited operation time and is precious enough to be worth to be retrieved back to earth.

IMO most probably some very sophisticated spy equipment which allows something like face recognition from orbit. The limited operation time is because the equipment itself for example uses up cooling liquid, also the nature of such a mission requires regular orbit changes which is using fuel.

I don't think it's the case, the X37 is put in orbit by an Atlas V and weighs about 5t (no idea how much payload you can have), while the same rocket can put up to 18t in LEO. It would be far cheaper to keep your secret gizmo up there and to provide it with 10t of consumables (for example liquid coolant) than to refuel it every 2 years.

Also the fairing is too small for good optics, so they can't fit a proper observation gear in it.

[Scotius]

Didn't Space Shuttles flew several missions for US military? Maybe X37 continues these missions? For example: DARPA comes with a piece of bleeding-edge electronic component that would revolutionise spy sats - but it needs to be tested in space for months before deemed reliable enough to be put inside a satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Shuttles are defunct. ISS is international - i doubt top secret equipment would be tested in a place where some bored cosmonaut could stumble on it by pure chance. X37 can take such gizmo to the orbit, keep it there for a very long time in relatively stable conditions, probably providing options for remote testing too. And when such tests are completed, it can land its cargo safely in designated area - with low risk of reentry mishap happening.

[Kinglet]

I am not even happy. This mission is just shady.

[Kryten]

The shuttle DOD missions were putting up very large recon sats; X-37 can't exactly fulfill that function.

[peadar1987]

It must be some piece of equipment/experiment which has a limited operation time and is precious enough to be worth to be retrieved back to earth.

IMO most probably some very sophisticated spy equipment which allows something like face recognition from orbit. The limited operation time is because the equipment itself for example uses up cooling liquid, also the nature of such a mission requires regular orbit changes which is using fuel.

As far as I know, face recognition (and reading newspaper headlines) from orbit is all but impossible, you're limited by the wavelength of light, and the size of your mirror, and unless we can get a 200m diameter mirror into orbit, we're not going to have the resolution to pick out the distinguishing features of a person's face from over 200km away.

[Frozen_Heart]

This is the thing I don't get about the X-37. Everyone goes through what it could be up there for and nothing makes sense.

After running through all its reasons for existing I can safely say I don't have a clue.

[m4v]

Maybe they are just testing how well can fare an ant colony in orbit, the secrecy is obviously because is too embarrassing to admit.

[Guest]

May be they just launched it empty, to keep us guessing and giving them ideas what to do with it.

[Tommygun]

The US Air Force wants a practical space plane in the future.

A cost effective way to do that is to test and fly small prototypes.

NASA had one it didn't want anymore, so the Air Force gets to practice on this one.

What they learn from it, they can use to design a better space plane. They also get to develop the daily procedures needed to run a space plane fleet.

The payload bay is just a bonus.

I think people want to believe it's used for some high tech spycraft because it is more exciting than a two year old sun bleached plastics experiment.

[Red Iron Crown]

The US Air Force wants a practical space plane in the future.

A cost effective way to do that is to test and fly small prototypes.

NASA had one it didn't want anymore, so the Air Force gets to practice on this one.

What they learn from it, they can use to design a better space plane. They also get to develop the daily procedures needed to run a space plane fleet.

The payload bay is just a bonus.

I think people want to believe it's used for some high tech spycraft because it is more exciting than a two year old sun bleached plastics experiment.

What makes you think the USAF is interested in a spaceplane fleet? Spaceplanes are fun in KSP but make little sense in real life.

[Tommygun]

The Air Force is trying to maintain its relevance in a long term future where more conventional aircraft may not be ideal.

Their logic may or may not be sound, but an aerospace plane, bomber or transporter is definitely something they want.

[Red Iron Crown]

The Air Force is trying to maintain its relevance in a long term future where more conventional aircraft may not be ideal.

Their logic may or may not be sound, but an aerospace plane, bomber or transporter is definitely something they want.

Do you have any sort of evidence supporting this? Nothing I've read indicates the USAF is interested in spaceplanes, it's all about UAVs and UCAVs now.