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History offers clues to what the U.S. Air Force’s secretive spaceplane can do
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 12y agoNice collection of the data available on Dynasoar. I'm guessing that now that folks have more launch capability outside the USA's ability to look at things before they go up, it provides an ability to look at them after they go up. But that is just guessing like everyone else.
- coin 12y ago-1 for <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1" user-scalable="no"> (disabling zoom)
- qnaal 12y agoMEDIUM -or- how to take a written article with associated images (pretty much the only thing that html/css does well), and make it less accessible for the web
- rrggrr 12y agoSatellites offer the same capabilities. What satellites don't offer is the ability to retreive (capture) objects, and maneuver (evade) at all altitudes. From the anti satellite efforts by China this decade I infer that evading ASAT weapons the primary goal, and that retrieval or placement of something are strong possibilities as well.
- Animats 12y agoRight, they're just guessing. As the article points out, there are better ways to do everything the Dyna-Soar could do. The US has a good anti-satellite weapon system left over from the 1980s, so there's no need to develop something new for that function. The XB-37 probably has some other function.
- scottlocklin 12y agoIf you consider what the military has spent money on using weird submarines (aka tapping underseas cables, including ones within Soviet waters), I think it's pretty obvious what the XB-37 is doing, just as the article hinted. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the... Other possibility, which I suppose could be ruled out, or partially verified, if one studied the orbital mechanics of the thing, "rods from god." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
- aaronbrethorst 12y agoKinetic bombardment is, by far, the weirdest proposed scenario I've heard for the X-37B program. Surveillance, on the other hand, certainly aligns much better with Occam's Razor[1] than the alternatives. [1] Or Gardan's Steelyard, assuming that all of the talk of kinetic bombardment made you think of Anathem, like it did for me.
- serf 12y agoI always felt the X37B was likely a platform to test/perform 'strike-back' comms capabilities after the initial orbital bombardment of comms satelites during WW3. It's all a guess, like any of this.
- joelrunyon 12y ago> The US has a good anti-satellite weapon system left over from the 1980s, so there's no need to develop something new for that function. The necessity for something has never stopped the military from trying to continue to develop new tech.
- gaius 12y agoIt's amazing how stuff from the 60s seems like sci-fi 50 years later.
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- 7952 12y agoI think they discount reconnaissance too quickly as a use. Whilst radio can be used to return data the bandwidth available is limited. A space plane has almost unlimited bandwidth even if there is a delay in getting the data.