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I think its real purpose is to deliver a nuclear warhead with less warning and less attention than a traditional ICBM launch.

by BMc2020 4y ago

Kadin 4y ago
Doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons. First, unless the satellite / bomb dispenser happens to be in the right orbit at the right time, you'd have to do some significant maneuvering on orbit. This is expensive in terms of energy/fuel. By the time you put the dispenser over or on the correct path to target, it might not even be faster than a conventional endo- or exo-atmospheric ballistic missile (SRBM/IRBM or ICBM). Second, long range nuclear strike is one of the USAF's justifications for its silo missile and bomber fleet, particularly the B-2 and just-started-production B-21 Raider (LRS-B). They're going to have some awkward questions to answer if a big part of their signature stealth penetration bomber's mission could have been done by another system all along. Hell, the USAF has been desperately trying to come up with non-nuclear roles for their existing nuclear delivery systems ("Prompt Global Strike", aka "hitting someone in the head with a reentry vehicle full of concrete going 7000 m/s") for years. Third, it's overly complex for that role. An ICBM warhead dispenser is something that exists; it's called the "bus" on MIRV missiles. If you wanted to put a bomb dispenser in orbit, you don't need a cool spaceplane. You just put a slightly bigger engine (or an extra stage) onto a traditional MIRV bus, so it has the delta-V to get into a stable LEO and sit there until you use or de-orbit it. The Soviets played with this concept extensively during the 1980s, and their "Sarmat" superheavy ICBM is probably capable of it. This was considered pretty destabilizing at the time (since it would avoid north-facing early warning systems) and was banned by treaty. So the US would be opening a can of worms back up that it seemingly tried hard to close in the 1980s, and it's a weirdly complicated way of doing it, vs. just building a superheavy ICBM like Russia did. A lot of the complexity of a Shuttle / delta-plane design is related to getting back from orbit. A weapons dispenser, whether nuclear or kinetic ("tungsten rods from God") wouldn't need to be recoverable at all. Or if you really insist on that as a requirement, it could use a cheap-and-cheerful Apollo-style splashdown design. Why have it land like a plane? Nuclear weapons are pretty robust. You could splash one into the ocean going pretty fast and still have it be recoverable. Which leads me to my personal theory: the design only makes sense if the intent is to bring things back. Fragile things. The NASA Shuttle landed like it did, because it had fragile humans on board. But why would a remotely-piloted vehicle need to? Maybe if it's bringing back things from orbit that were never meant to land on Earth in one piece.
- BMc2020 4y ago
  https://interestingengineering.com/us-military-orbital-record-x-37b https://interestingengineering.com/us-military-orbital-recor... *The secrecy over the purposes of the space plane has even prompted Russia to say that apart from carrying out surveillance, the space plane could be harboring nuclear warheads.*
meepmorp 4y ago
That doesn't make much sense. It's a single space ship that maybe has the same warhead payload capacity as a couple standard MIRV ballistic missiles. Any target the US is going to nuke in a first strike won't be destroyed enough to effectively prevent a counter strike, or all out nuclear war. It's probably something NRO related.
- lumost 4y ago
  The Space shuttle had a 60 ton payload as I recall. A large nuclear warhead is 1000kg, in theory 3 space shuttles could deliver ~90 large warheads or up to 900 smaller warheads. Space Shuttles would also have the ability to identify hard to find targets such as mobile ICBM launchers. The idea of using shuttles to manage or deliver a nuclear deterrent/first strike capability in space was probably considered at some point during its development. If there was one reason to scratch this idea, it would be that launching a nuclear shuttle would have been highly auspicious - and likely treated as the equivalent of an ICBM launch. It's highly unlikely that permanent orbital munitions would be tolerated either.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    > in theory 3 space shuttles could deliver ~90 large warheads or up to 900 smaller warheads. In practicality, all three shuttle launch facilities could not be used simultaneously. In fact, the two actually ever used could not have been used simultaneously. And space shuttles could not have been kept at standby, their launch sequence even in an emergency could never be reduced below 72 hours, and even that with tremendous difficulty. And even if you could get three shuttles airborne at once, where would you land them? Also, I'm not sure if the Vandenburg launch could land after a single orbit, I think that the Florida launches would land a white sands. > Space Shuttles would also have the ability to identify hard to find targets such as mobile ICBM launchers. Space shuttles overflying the Soviet Union on a polar trajectory had no ability to maneuver, they had to fly a very specific trajectory to make the landing site. And no way an orbital vehicle could identify a target on the ground and alter its inclination to overfly it on that orbit. That would require both enormous Delta-V and high lateral G loads. Then they'd have to readjust the inclination to land.

I think its real purpose is to deliver a nuclear warhead with less warning and less attention than a traditional ICBM launch.

Kadin 4y ago

Doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons. First, unless the satellite / bomb dispenser happens to be in the right orbit at the right time, you'd have to do some significant maneuvering on orbit. This is expensive in terms of energy/fuel. By the time you put the dispenser over or on the correct path to target, it might not even be faster than a conventional endo- or exo-atmospheric ballistic missile (SRBM/IRBM or ICBM). Second, long range nuclear strike is one of the USAF's justifications for its silo missile and bomber fleet, particularly the B-2 and just-started-production B-21 Raider (LRS-B). They're going to have some awkward questions to answer if a big part of their signature stealth penetration bomber's mission could have been done by another system all along. Hell, the USAF has been desperately trying to come up with non-nuclear roles for their existing nuclear delivery systems ("Prompt Global Strike", aka "hitting someone in the head with a reentry vehicle full of concrete going 7000 m/s") for years. Third, it's overly complex for that role. An ICBM warhead dispenser is something that exists; it's called the "bus" on MIRV missiles. If you wanted to put a bomb dispenser in orbit, you don't need a cool spaceplane. You just put a slightly bigger engine (or an extra stage) onto a traditional MIRV bus, so it has the delta-V to get into a stable LEO and sit there until you use or de-orbit it. The Soviets played with this concept extensively during the 1980s, and their "Sarmat" superheavy ICBM is probably capable of it. This was considered pretty destabilizing at the time (since it would avoid north-facing early warning systems) and was banned by treaty. So the US would be opening a can of worms back up that it seemingly tried hard to close in the 1980s, and it's a weirdly complicated way of doing it, vs. just building a superheavy ICBM like Russia did. A lot of the complexity of a Shuttle / delta-plane design is related to getting back from orbit. A weapons dispenser, whether nuclear or kinetic ("tungsten rods from God") wouldn't need to be recoverable at all. Or if you really insist on that as a requirement, it could use a cheap-and-cheerful Apollo-style splashdown design. Why have it land like a plane? Nuclear weapons are pretty robust. You could splash one into the ocean going pretty fast and still have it be recoverable. Which leads me to my personal theory: the design only makes sense if the intent is to bring things back. Fragile things. The NASA Shuttle landed like it did, because it had fragile humans on board. But why would a remotely-piloted vehicle need to? Maybe if it's bringing back things from orbit that were never meant to land on Earth in one piece.

BMc2020 4y ago
https://interestingengineering.com/us-military-orbital-record-x-37b https://interestingengineering.com/us-military-orbital-recor... *The secrecy over the purposes of the space plane has even prompted Russia to say that apart from carrying out surveillance, the space plane could be harboring nuclear warheads.*

meepmorp 4y ago

That doesn't make much sense. It's a single space ship that maybe has the same warhead payload capacity as a couple standard MIRV ballistic missiles. Any target the US is going to nuke in a first strike won't be destroyed enough to effectively prevent a counter strike, or all out nuclear war. It's probably something NRO related.

lumost 4y ago
The Space shuttle had a 60 ton payload as I recall. A large nuclear warhead is 1000kg, in theory 3 space shuttles could deliver ~90 large warheads or up to 900 smaller warheads. Space Shuttles would also have the ability to identify hard to find targets such as mobile ICBM launchers. The idea of using shuttles to manage or deliver a nuclear deterrent/first strike capability in space was probably considered at some point during its development. If there was one reason to scratch this idea, it would be that launching a nuclear shuttle would have been highly auspicious - and likely treated as the equivalent of an ICBM launch. It's highly unlikely that permanent orbital munitions would be tolerated either.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > in theory 3 space shuttles could deliver ~90 large warheads or up to 900 smaller warheads. In practicality, all three shuttle launch facilities could not be used simultaneously. In fact, the two actually ever used could not have been used simultaneously. And space shuttles could not have been kept at standby, their launch sequence even in an emergency could never be reduced below 72 hours, and even that with tremendous difficulty. And even if you could get three shuttles airborne at once, where would you land them? Also, I'm not sure if the Vandenburg launch could land after a single orbit, I think that the Florida launches would land a white sands. > Space Shuttles would also have the ability to identify hard to find targets such as mobile ICBM launchers. Space shuttles overflying the Soviet Union on a polar trajectory had no ability to maneuver, they had to fly a very specific trajectory to make the landing site. And no way an orbital vehicle could identify a target on the ground and alter its inclination to overfly it on that orbit. That would require both enormous Delta-V and high lateral G loads. Then they'd have to readjust the inclination to land.