[AgentR11]

I don't know, did the shuttle ever "bring anything back?"

omg

I mean other than astronauts off the ISS and trash or whatever, experiments etc.

Seriously I don't remember ever hearing about any satellites captured and brought back to earth.

There were a couple, but that's not that big a deal. Bringing material down to be studied, eg experiments or film is the biggy.

Wings don't give the craft anything on the way up; they don't do anything in space; only for the landing phase do they become an asset; and the only reason to land something that would otherwise be a glorified payload fairing is if you want whats in the cargo bay to be useful after having landed.

OTOH, the 600 day thing is bugging me. I could see it having a combined digital and film surveilance package; where it stays on station in orbit, till needed. In an emergency, it makes a pass over its target, burns its film, and then reenters the atmosphere; its wings give it enough maneuverability such that it would have much greater leeway for acceptable orbits to return on, so reasonably quick time delay between taking the image and a human looking at the developed film.

Could be other things, maybe a materials test that DoD wants complete control over from the time its put inside the mini-shuttle, till the time its rolled into a hanger to be examined. That would be consistent with a 600day+ flight time.

Oooooorrrrr... oooo oooo oooo.
They are growing....
booting on /dev/sda1... Cyberdyne Systems Series 600 Model 202 ALPHA BUILD 0001

[Subjectivist]

BBC has a new report out on this, see link under quote for much longer artical.

A US plane on a top-secret, two-year mission to space has returned to Earth and landed in California.

The aircraft, resembling a miniature space shuttle and known as the Orbital Test Vehicle or X-37B, spent 674 days in orbit around the planet.

It touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base on Friday morning.

The purpose of the plane remains unclear - a theory that it was taking a look at China's space lab has recently been downplayed by experts.

Air Force officials have only told US media the aircraft performs "risk reduction, experimentation and concept-of-operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada ... ow_twitter

[Sixstrings]

Another of Boeing's drones, X45 phantom ray will be the most powerful combat drone in the skies:




Looks like the Pelican was canceled. But a good idea there, a massive unmanned cargo drone:

Boeing Pelican

This behemoth would have been 400 feet long and have a wingspan of 500 feet to accommodate large cargo loads. This plane would use the ‘ground effect’ to fly just above the surface at a height of 20-50 feet.

It was certainly expected to be able to carry huge loads across enormous distances - 1,200 tonnes of cargo across 18,000 kilometres.

It could, however, have also gone airborne if it was required, at a height of 20,000 feet, but would see its range reduced by two-thirds.

Despite its potential use, nothing has been heard of the craft or any prototypes being created since 2002.


http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/38787-the-x-37b-and-four-more/

Imagine what that will do for just air transport in general -- no more pilots -- fedex and ups and all the air cargo shipped in 24/7 operating drones. Now we just need those Elon Musk hyperloops, and google's driverless cars will be ready in 5-10 years.. if we don't die of pandemic or Russian nukes.. or the matrix turns on us with all these drones and robots.. the future's lookin' pretty cool!

Oh, price of oil is down too, lowest in four years!

[Subjectivist]

inagine what that will do...

Skynet???

[AgentR11]

Another idea.

A nuke or set of nukes, for high orbit or geosync orbit detonation.

The one thing you don't want with your space nukes is to have to worry about reentry accident/discover (since they're illegal.) If you can LAND your orbitting nuclear weapon platform, at will, and at a site of your choosing, or even just have enough flight control to land over some 20,000+ft deep ocean; then you can have your nukes and not be concerned so much with discovery.

I think it needs its payload bay to be open for solar panel usage though, so maybe not... I dunno.
tin foil.... need more tin foil!!!

[Shaved Monkey]

Its mission is to maintain BAU.

[vox_mundi]

The commonest thing brought back to Earth is old fashioned film. Space based cameras are one of the last holdouts for film. Such cameras are capable of much finer resolution photos than electronic cameras which are limited by the number of photodetector devices in the sensor array.

Using film, you can take high resolution photos of wide areas, and then have those images analyzed by computers and people. In this way you can search an entire country from orbit. The electronic cameras can achieve equal resolution but with much smaller fields of view, limited by the bandwidth required to transmit the images.

DoD is All Digital - hasn't used film for over 30 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan

Manufactured in December 1976 by Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, the KH-11 was the first American spy satellite to use electro-optical digital imaging, and create a real-time optical observation capability.[8]

Later KH-11 satellites have been referred to by outside observers as KH-11B or KH-12, and by the names "Advanced KENNAN", "Improved Crystal" and "Ikon". Official budget documents refer to the latest generation of Electro-Optical satellites as Evolved Enhanced CRYSTAL System.[5]

The NRO's first photo reconnaissance satellite program was the Corona program, the Corona system used (sometimes multiple) film capsules dropped by satellites, which were recovered mid-air by military craft. The first successful recovery from space (Discoverer XIII) occurred on August 12, 1960, and the first image from space was seen six days later. The first imaging resolution was 8 meters, which was improved to 2 meters. Individual images covered, on average, an area of about 10 by 120 miles (16 by 193 km). The last Corona mission (the 145th), was launched May 25, 1972, and this mission's last images were taken May 31, 1972.

... The electronic cameras can achieve equal resolution but with much smaller fields of view, limited by the bandwidth required to transmit the images.

- Still 20 years behind the times KJ ...

http://www.distantfocus.com/projects/aware/
http://www.gigapan.com/galleries/11088/gigapans/146504 (click and zoom ... and zoom ...and zoom)
http://gigapan.com/gigapans/48492/
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/31 ... l-photos/2

Current transmission rate is >100-300 Gbits/sec

Current image resolution exceed 1 inch.
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread. ... resolution

Snapping pictures isn't the only thing they do

- High resolution photography (IMINT)
- Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT)
- Communications eavesdropping (SIGINT)

Or, maybe it's part of this project ...

Antimatter Harvesting In Space
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/ ... ackson.pdf
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1569
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390638,00.asp


Darpa has indicated that they have completed Phase 2 of the study; Operational Phase 3 projects would be handed off to AirForce

Besides space travel, the "other" use for anti-protons is Weapons. Darpa has been working on anti-matter and particle beams for several years. Look it up yourself in the DARPA annual budget line items and project descriptors - starting in 2005.

What's interesting about the picture at the very beginning is the fact that the techs are wearing SCBA and are carrying an apparatus/box. Why? Is this pre- or post- flight? (probably post)

Radiation monitoring? Gas (liquid helium coolant for superconductor magnets) monitoring? Inquiring minds want to know.

Everything else is airgapped and requires TS//SCI. If you have it you already know where to look.

[vox_mundi]

Regarding your question of why anyone would want to bring back something - 90% of the satellites up there are military and 50-60% don't belong to us. Many of those foreign satellites have classified 'stuff' onboard. Might be interesting to 'borrow' one from time to time.

Ok, as a practical matter, did the old shuttle ever REALLY do that? Just steal a satellite from the Russians or whatever? I find that highly unlikely, that kind of thing would make the Russians or Chinese VERY upset.

And there is no way to grab a satellite, take it down, pick at it then bring it back up without the Russians or Chinese ever knowing it was gone. Ergo, I just don't think that ever happened -- it's a GREAT idea for a shuttle granted, BUT did it ever actually happen?

Haven't you ever watched Mission Impossible. You know; like when they substitute a dummy chip or 'something' for the 'real one'. Let's just say - it can be done.

If nothing else what about the fact that every NASA mission was an open book and broadcast on NASA tv, cameras in the cargo bay and all that.

C'mon Six - Tell me you're not that naive. I worked with NASA on a project for STS-95. You don't know the half of it.

You don't need a shuttle to do that, though. A plain old missile can intersect and destroy a satellite.

Too may extra pieces flying about. The Chinese already demonstrated what happens when you do that. Watch 'Gravity' for a good reason why that's not a good reason.

[AgentR11]

What's interesting about the picture at the very beginning is the fact that the techs are wearing SCBA and are carrying an apparatus/box. Why? Is this pre- or post- flight? (probably post)

Radiation monitoring? Gas (liquid helium coolant for superconductor magnets) monitoring? Inquiring minds want to know.

Everything else is airgapped and requires TS//SCI. If you have it you already know where to look.

Thanks for the info on film vs digital.
SCBA - I'm pretty sure the fuel they use, hydrazine, is toxic, right? Safety first, can't be having no fun out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine

[Sixstrings]

Omg, is the that the Russian loch ness monster sub in Sweden?



What is that supposed to be, pstarr? You know, about Russia and the old Soviets, they've got a proud aerospace history and there's really nothing to make fun of them for.

Biggest cargo plane in the world, though they only ever built one of them.

First satellite in space, first animal in space, first man in space, and if I recall their Luna probe was first to the moon. We finally caught up to them and went bigger -- more probes, Mars, apollo program.

Russian equipment is good though. We built a space shuttle, so they did too, even though they had no use for one. We built ICBM boomers, so they built an even bigger one -- the typhoon class -- it's got bragging rights for size but it's more detectable.

Soyuz is good, and reliable. That old hind helicopter they used in Afghansitan is a wicked beast. Until shoulder-fired rockets, courtesy of the CIA, spelled its doom.

Point is though, there's nothing to make fun of the Russians on about this they can be proud of their stuff the only difference is Soviets and Russians went for *quanitity* over quality / advanced tech, whereas we went the advanced tech doctrine route.

So now the US has space shuttle drones, and they don't. And we're also spending magnitudes more dollars on military -- to be fair it's impressive what Russia does, with the money it has.

Having said that, they'll fall behind int he long run. The legacy Soviet engineering is good, but it's the past. They can't seem to produce an Elon Musk and that kind of innovation -- because they are a dictatorship, and dictatorship without communism can't really innovate much at all.

[vox_mundi]

Russia tests 'satellite catcher'
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30097643

Russia may be testing a satellite capable of chasing down other orbiting spacecraft, observers say. Such technology could be used for a wide variety of uses, including to repair malfunctioning spacecraft, but also to destroy or disable them.

The Kosmos 2499 satellite separated from the upper stage of its rocket two years ago and then chased it down.

A satellite inspector is designed to sneak up on another satellite and photograph it or eavesdrop on its communications. But the same technology could also potentially be used to disable spacecraft - an anti-satellite weapon.

This year, both America and China have carried out tests similar to that carried out by Moscow. On 28 July, the US Air Force launched an experimental satellite called ANGELS (short for Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space).

The Chinese Shijian 15 satellite seems to be undertaking a similar task to that of Kosmos 2499. Launched on 19 July 2013, it has repeatedly approached and shadowed Shijian 7, an older Chinese satellite. Intriguingly, another spacecraft launched on the same rocket as Shijian 15 may have used a robotic arm to release and then recapture a smaller companion satellite.

[Sixstrings]

Ah.. bingo.. that's the what space shuttle drone is for.

Now we need a "catcher" to go catch Russia's "satellite catcher." And then Russia can make a bigger spaceship to catch our satellite-catcher catcher.