What is the United States Air Force X-37B? It is a secret unmanned (robotic) space plane that has been on four missions with one over a year in orbit.
The space plane looks like a miniaturized adaptation of NASA’s space shuttle. It is 29 feet long and a little under 10 feet tall with a wingspan of almost 15 feet. The manned space shuttles were 122 feet long with a wingspan of 78 feet.
The payload bay is about the size of a normal sized pickup-truck bed. It has a launch weight of 11,000 pounds and is powered on orbit by solar cells with lithium-ion batteries. There are known to be two of these reusable vehicles which Boeing built for the Air Force. The X-37B vehicle development was done at Boeing’s Defense, Space and Security division in El Segundo, California, the firm’s center for all space and experimental systems.
While the Air Force will not disclose exactly what their unmanned space plane is being used for, they do deny that it is being used for weapons development. They state that the X-37B is being used to explore reusable space vehicle technologies with an eye toward the long term objectives of reduction of risk and operations development.
Some of the payloads carried into orbit by the X-37B include the XR-5A Hall Thruster made by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The thruster was tested in orbit; it is a plasma based thruster with a thrust of about 200 kW (approximately 500 Newtons). This type of thruster might well be used in a mission to Mars. Also it is known to have been used in advance materials investigation by NASA.
Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, told Space.com, “While no more specifics have been offered about the X-37B by the Air Force since it began flying the orbital technology test bed in 2010, the overall mission seems clear: Lengthy missions allow time for seeing what such a vehicle has to offer in terms of capabilities. The military likes to have lots of arrows in its quiver.”
One thing that is strange to me is that this space plane is very similar to the Russian miniature copy of our space shuttle. It makes me wonder is there no better design than a lifting body with stubby wings? In my own opinion I prefer the vertical take off and landing rocket to a space shuttle, it is just a better idea and more efficient. Plus it will have a faster turnaround time than the space shuttle ever had and hopefully be also more robust than the shuttle’s fragile heat resistant tiles were.
Another thing is that private industry is doing a great job on their own in developing reusable space vehicles without the help of the military. Someday soon we may be able to buy a ticket to fly into low earth orbit and a new age will have dawned.
Lastly the Air Force’s keeping a lid on exactly what the mission of this vehicle is seems to be just the standard policy of our armed forces and is not them trying to coverup the development of space based weapons.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
