[HN Gopher] US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms tow...
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US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward orbital
record
Author : ortusdux
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-06-28 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leonarddavid.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leonarddavid.com)
| ncmncm wrote:
| The best publicly available evidence suggests that X-37B is
| practically useless, but storing it in orbit _looks_ better than
| leaving it parked in a hangar on the ground. They can pretend it
| is on "a mission".
|
| Whatever instruments it is "testing" clearly could as well have
| been lofted without the X-37B attached, for less money, as for
| STS payloads. I.e., instead of X-37B, wrap in a fairing and
| disposable insertion-burn rocket atop rather smaller booster.
| duxup wrote:
| > The best publicly available evidence suggests that X-37B is
| practically useless
|
| Got some links that we can read on that?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| If the X-37s were civilian, they would be lauded as a fantastic
| step forward in space tech. They would carry numerous public
| experiments. But because we use them to spy on the rest of the
| World, they remain mostly shrouded.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I think it's a weapon (projected radio, radar interference,
| etc.) rather than a tool for spying.
| krono wrote:
| The article mentions several publicised experiments that were
| on this mission.
|
| Who knows what else its carrying or doing - anti-satalite
| weaponry, ICBM counter-measures, or for all we know it's been
| coasting about in standby mode with an empty bay all this time
| and the B in its name stands for "bluff" :)
| FredPret wrote:
| I wonder what the best space vehicles today look like. We may
| only know decades from now. If having spy satellite photos
| reduces the chance of WW3 by even 1%, it's worth the wait
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| What if it increases it by 1%?
| moffkalast wrote:
| What if 73% of statistics get made up on the spot?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well that's one stat in the world that you definitely
| want to know the sign of at least!
| [deleted]
| jdironman wrote:
| This is an interesting thought experiment. Take open source
| vs closed source software for example. Usually closed source
| with strong financial backing tends to fare better stability
| wise it doesn't always performance wise. Usually features can
| be pretty on par. For example LibreOffice and Microsoft
| office products. I guess where I was going with that train of
| thought, was this: are there any public domain knowledge
| repositories of what's possible now? Such as higher education
| research / publications or news site which aggregates
| advancements which happen outside the government sector? I'm
| guessing such info might be highly regulated, I don't know.
| And possibly not much use to the average civilian, so that
| niche of information is highly guarded / commercialized.
| jcfrei wrote:
| Why is this such a persistent meme that governments always
| have some crazy tech up their sleeves? Highly advanced
| military tech is mostly about intimidation so there's little
| benefit in keeping stuff secret for decades (actual war is
| mostly a numbers game so having a plane that's 2x better is
| not very useful if the other side has 10x as many).
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's an incredible waste. The best and brightest slaving
| lifetimes away for things that will hopefully never be used,
| and if they are, for death.
|
| If only we could just agree to staff military research on all
| sides with the biggest wasters and toxic personalities and let
| the rest of the world get on with something that doesn't leave
| other humans splattered across some battlefield.
| baybal2 wrote:
| golem14 wrote:
| Ja, let's put all the Hitlers in charge of the militaries.
| What could go wrong ?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well everyone's taking that wayyyyy too seriously.
|
| Put the assholes together and let them fight it out
| uselessly. They probably won't be able to agree who's name
| goes at the top of the table, let alone figure out to
| rocketry.
|
| Pardon me if burning a good propertion of the brainpower of
| the species on killing each other seems wasteful.
|
| Obviously you can't actually do that because that's
| basically a prisoners' dilemma with bombs.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| And then there is this thing called "reality".
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I get what you're saying, it does seem wasteful, but
| sadly pacifists are no match for tyrants. It is admirable
| to want to be left alone in-peace, but as long as there
| are other human beings willing to use force, it cannot
| be. The less a society puts towards its war-fighting
| capabilities the more likely it is to be conquered by
| some adversary.
|
| It is also probably the case that our brainpower didn't
| invent warfare, and that this phenomenon isn't unique to
| us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Right, I know it's clearly not even close to possible,
| it's a game theory inevitability. I mean, even biological
| evolution is basically an arms race. We're doing well too
| just be where we are after all these millennia.
|
| But could you imagine if we could spend all those
| trillions on something good (enabled by the other guys
| doing the same). I know, impossible. But still, imagine.
| trinovantes wrote:
| Lots of useful stuff came out of military research too e.g.
| internet, GPS, synthetic rubber, etc.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Sure, but it took a few trillion dollars literally going up
| in smoke for that to happen.
|
| I'm not disputing that things come out of war, it's just
| not an especially great ROI.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Perhaps so, but perhaps not. The weapons that "will hopefully
| never be used" are the best kind - a war deterrent - and
| contribute the most towards peace, since the alternative is
| so unthinkable that nobody would ever go for it. Laws (or in
| this case international agreements) are only a thing if
| they're enforced by consequences, otherwise people ignore
| them the first chance they get.
|
| It's pretty clear that without those brilliant minds that
| invented nukes we'd be at WW4 or 5 by now.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wish the defense industry and government agencies paid
| FAANG salaries.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| If Mark Zuckerberg spent a lifetime writing COBOL to
| interface with a 1972 missile silo door control panel, we'd
| certainly be doing well.
|
| Bonus points if his manager is someone like Boris Johnson.
| vibrolax wrote:
| I wish FAANG paid government and defense industry salaries.
| Then our best and brightest might be engaged in something
| other than advertising and social engineering.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Does someone know approximately how many times per day this plane
| would orbit the planet? I was wondering to try and figure out how
| far it has "flown" to date. You could say the plane has an
| incredible range!
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| No way to know for us, but typically, 75 to 90 minutes per
| orbit.
| loeg wrote:
| If we knew the altitude, wouldn't we have a pretty good
| estimate? And vice verca? I think amateurs have probably
| observed this already. Here's a claim[1]:
|
| > The spaceplane is orbiting at an altitude of about 320
| kilometers (a little under 200 miles)
|
| 320 km gives an orbital period of ~91 minutes.
|
| [1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-
| magazine/spaceplane...
| robonerd wrote:
| Satellites like this can be observed from Earth, so those
| details aren't really as secret as the government may wish.
| But yes, about 90 minutes; it's generally around 300-400 km
| up.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Here is a good tracking page:
| https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=45606
|
| From those numbers, a rough estimate is 16.25 million miles,
| 1.45 light minutes, or 0.17 AU.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%282*pi*%28%28333.2km+%...
|
| Orbital tracking of the earlier missions was interesting, as
| the vehicle can change orbits easily. There was a bit of a cat
| and mouse game between hobbyists and the operators IIRC.
|
| Edit: This is the vehicle's 6th flight, so summing up all 6
| missions so far gets you roughly 77.18 million miles / 6.9
| light minutes / 0.83 AU.
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%282*pi*%28%28401km+%2B...
|
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%282*pi*%28%28312km+%2B...
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