My take? This vehicle, so far as can be determined, offers only one obvious function that a regular expendable satellite cannot offer. It can bring stuff back. The intriguing question is; "what stuff"? - Ed Kyle
If the X-37 can last 270 days in orbit....well that would be great for an ISS crew return vehicle too. Stick a crew compartment in the payload bay......I know, I know, it's not really meant for that, it's an unmanned test vehicle owned by the Air Force. But if this vehicle successfully flies, might a derivative be offered up as a commercial crew return vehicle or cargo craft?
BTW, If 2.2 km/s is in the right ball-park for the X-37B, then I think it could put itself into low orbit powered just by an Atlas V first-stage... That's sort of like SSTO (but cheating, since your payload is also another stage). If the delta-v is higher, like 3km/s, then even a double-sized (22 ton) X-37B could be put into LEO with just an Atlas V first stage. Of course, I am probably forgetting something important.(Now, recover that first stage and you've got yourself a reusable launch vehicle of sorts, though it'd be too small to make sense, with only a 1-ton payload size with a 22-ton X-37B-derivative...).
Close the doors, come home, and now you have flight qualified sensors/components.
Quote from: Bubbinski on 02/27/2010 03:08 amIf the X-37 can last 270 days in orbit....well that would be great for an ISS crew return vehicle too. Stick a crew compartment in the payload bay......I know, I know, it's not really meant for that, it's an unmanned test vehicle owned by the Air Force. But if this vehicle successfully flies, might a derivative be offered up as a commercial crew return vehicle or cargo craft?no, it is too small and would be too expensive to enlarge. Boeing is going with a capsule
Quote from: robertross on 02/27/2010 01:23 am Close the doors, come home, and now you have flight qualified sensors/components.One minor nit with that. It is not that you will end up manufacturing a sensor/component on orbit. It is more likely you will manufacture either a high purity or exotic bulk material that can be turned into a sensor/component on the ground. High purity bulk materials will allow the production of very large semiconductor devices (think giga pixel imaging chips). Exotic materials produced in a gravity well may have so many defects in them that it is difficult (if not impossible) to produce large devices with them (This has been one of the limitations with IR sensors).
Just a thought, in my minds eye you can not fit an entire fab inside of an X-37. I honestly wonder if you could fit one inside of ISS. For real bulk material manufacturing, I do wonder how large the equipment will be and how much power will be required.
If you check out the photos on Wikipedia of X-37B underneath the Rutan lift vehicle, you can see what looks like a flagpole sticking out of the nose. This spike is retracted at launch and extended prior to re-entry. The purpose of the spike is to create the leading sonic boom (hypersonic bow wave) and transonic region during re-entry -- well in front of the vehicle itself. The atmosphere reaching the wings and thermal protection surfaces is much slower than the hypersonic bow wave -- thus less heating occurs on the fuselage than on the spike.The retractable/extensible spike absorbs such an enormous amount of energy and transforms it into heat, yet the spike is not very massive. In order to dissipate the heat without transferring it to the fuselage or melting in an uncontrolled manner, the spike is designed to ablate like many heat shields have (e.g. Apollo). "Ablate" means that the spike flakes apart in a controlled manner which leaves behind useful which continues to be the interface between the craft and the hypersonic flow.The spike is shown extended in the re-entry test photo because the vehicle was configured for re-entry.Before GWB scuttled Al Gore's X-38 ISS re-entry vehicle, there had been some talk of incorporating the ablative re-entry spike into ISS return craft. It appeared from the outside (I'm not an insider) that the military community in the US was getting paranoid that revealing the secret ablative spike technology to the foreign competition.
I came across the following slashdot comment about the X-37 having an "ablative spike" (which seems to be in the WK2 photos). Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past?
Quote from: neilh on 03/14/2010 07:30 pm...Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past?There is no such thing on X-37. It is just some B S by someone incorrectDoes the shuttle have one?Yes it did, it is a air data boom. Very common on new aircraft configs undergoing flight test....
...Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past?
Also, I remember once noticing Trident and M-51 SLBM's have spikes in the front. Never figured out what those are for. If it is just because they are supposed to be launched underwater, or what.
Quote from: neilh on 03/14/2010 07:30 pmI came across the following slashdot comment about the X-37 having an "ablative spike" (which seems to be in the WK2 photos). Anybody know anything more about this, if the comment below is nonsense, or if ablative reentry spikes have been tested in the past?There is no such thing on X-37. It is just some B S by someone incorrectDoes the shuttle have one?Yes it did, it is a air data boom. Very common on new aircraft configs undergoing flight test.http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/luceneweb/fullimage.jsp?searchpage=true&keywords=enterprise&textsearch=Go&hitsperpage=30&pageno=2&photoId=S77-28140
Sorry if this has been covered before:Can the X-37B reach the ISS and return from it? Can the X-37B practically be made to dock with the ISS?Could a single astronaut with an ACES suit, sufficient air, and proper restraint survive launch and/or re-entry in the X-37B?
Sorry if this has been covered before:Can the X-37B reach the ISS and return from it? Can the X-37B practically be made to dock with the ISS?