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Given the frequency and consistency of narrative with which it appears in the press, at this stage I'm convinced it's an empty UAV used entirely for some market
by shockinglytrue 6y ago
Given the frequency and consistency of narrative with which it appears in the press, at this stage I'm convinced it's an empty UAV used entirely for some marketing purpose
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mhh__ 6y agoIt's spending months in space, I don't think it's for marketing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j56s46e97Lo Based on what this talk indicates, the US Government is doing some questionable(...) things in terms of signals intelligence in space. We probably won't know what X37-B is doing in space for years but I imagine they will have at least tried to do some big brother exercises. The US/Western Intelligence community effectively treats all communications as fair game - they always have (e.g. MI5 were capturing encryption keys from neutral embassies using microphones in the ~50/60s) they just possess the means to do it efficiently at large scale now. I imagine a large part of its mission is also just testing military equipment that can't go on the ISS but that's not as sexy.
- azernik 6y agoThey're doing some questionable sigint things I'm sure, but you don't need reentry and reusability for that. The most likely use-case is for testing components to use in conventional satellites.
- greedo 6y agoYears in space, not months.
- chiph 6y agoIt's a resupply mission for Hugo Drax and Drax Industries. /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax
- azernik 6y agoMost likely is for component testing - would explain the secrecy, the low flight rate, and the long (2 years or so) mission duration. EDIT: And, in fact, the one publicly-released payload I'm finding was a test of a new heat pipe.