Secretive Military Spaceplane Lands in Florida After Record-Long Orbital Flight
October 27th, 2019I’m thinking: Kinetic bombardment. Ground attack capability from orbit; projectiles, accelerated mostly by gravity, maybe launched with a bit of cold gas.
What’s your guess?
Via: Reuters:
The Pentagon’s secretive X-37B spaceplane landed in Florida on Sunday after a record-long orbital flight lasting more than two years, the U.S. Air Force said, capping the latest test mission for an array of military technologies.
The unpiloted X-37B, built by Boeing Co., touched down on an air strip at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:51 a.m. ET after spending 780 days orbiting Earth as the Air Force’s fifth flight mission under the Orbital Test Vehicle program, the Air Force said.
The spaceplane, roughly the size of a small bus and sharing many design features with NASA’s Space Shuttle, was sent into orbit in 2017 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, embarking on a mission managed by the Washington-based Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office to conduct various classified technology experiments in a long-duration space environment.
It’s such a mystery, but to me it seems like the flight time of each mission has to factor into it. It’s such a significant attribute of the X-37B and its siblings that I have to think that’s a tell – but of what?
I can see how kinetic bombardment could be one thing they’re working on, but do you see how being up for 2 years would benefit that kind of experimentation? I don’t see a connection.
Dark Journalist has discussed the space plane program in pretty good detail and I know you’ve watched him before – do you think there’s any merit to his tie-in with the X series material? It certainly seems at least plausible to me.
“It’s such a mystery, but to me it seems like the flight time of each mission has to factor into it. It’s such a significant attribute of the X-37B and its siblings that I have to think that’s a tell – but of what?”
Oh yeah, I agree. Maybe they’re testing out its ability to loiter for a very long time. The goal might be to get several of them up there in different orbits, always ready to strike anywhere on the surface. Just a guess.
I have listened to some of Dark Journalist’s X series shows, but I haven’t listened to anything from him specifically on this. If you have a link that that show, I’d like to listen to it.
Might precise use of kinetic weapons require precise gravitational mapping? Or have they been testing their ability to sneak up on satellites undetected?
Really pushing it on the next one, but what if the X-37B is the first stage of a space version of the USS Jimmy Carter’s fibre optic splicing? Perhaps monitoring and analysing ingoing and outgoing signals from foreign satellites could provide sufficient information to allow them to insert themselves into enemy satellite communication networks.