NASA - Armed Robotic Hypersonic Gliders Replace Manned Space Shuttles

"The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle took a decade to develop and will spend up to nine months in orbit. It will re-enter Earth on autopilot and land, just like an ordinary plane, at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The decision on when it returns to Earth is dependant on the Air Force are satisfied with the tasks it has been set to carry out in space.

'In all honesty, we don't know when it's coming back for sure,' Mr Payton said. 'It depends on the progress we make with the on-orbit experiments and the on-orbit demonstrations.'"

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

"Dr Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of national security and decision making at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, told the BBC the launch was something of an experiment for the military.

...

She claimed the US military had wanted a craft with the ability to loiter in space for some time.

'If it lives up to its speculated hype, it could be a manoeuvrable satellite,' she said.

'You could move it to, for example, hover over the straits of Taiwan and it could evade attempts to shoot it down. It could do a lot of things that up until this point have been mostly fiction.'

A second experimental plane is already on order and is due to launch in 2011."

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

Our glorious super weapons will ensure the survival of the Reich for the next 1,000 years!

"The X-37B is a recently launched unmanned space vehicle that the U. S. Air Force has developed, apparently to maintain its ability to launch spy satellites now that the last scheduled Shuttle flight is taking place as I write this. Like the Shuttle, it is a reusable craft with vestigial wings whose design was based on the Shuttle when NASA asked Boeing to develop an earlier version, the X-37, back in 1999."

[link to engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com]

This vehicle has been in development basically since the space shuttles were created, they were prototypes. This source says development began in 1999. I predicted the speedy arrival of this vehicle in 2003 when they destroyed the Columbia.

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that is still going on in the Gulf of Mexico has inspired calls to shove British Petroleum out of the way and put the military in charge. As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, the problem with this idea is that BP and their contractor Transocean have all the smarts in this case. But if the problems that BP and Transocean are having are organizational rather than technical, they might benefit from having the Marines run things for a while."

"Now, for the second time since it launched, it's disappeared and the race is on once again to a) find it, then b) offer a plausible theory about what it's up to this time.

Back in late July, the X-37B went AWOL for nearly two weeks off its regular flight path.

When it was found, by amateur skywatcher Greg Roberts of Cape Town, South Africa, its new trajectory proved the shuttle was much more versatile than previously thought, with a "cross-range" wing set-up that may allow it to compensate for the slight turn in the Earth after a single orbit and land back on its original launch pad.

Now it's gone missing again, failing to pass over its regular flight path on the nights of October 7 and 9, according to UniverseToday.

This time around, the alarm bells have started ringing much earlier, thanks to the extra scrutiny offered by how-to video guides and apps such as the Simple Satellite Tracker which popped up after its first disappearance."

[link to newworldorderreport.com]

"The X-37B's solar array allows it to stay aloft for 270 days, but even top brass at the US Air Force can't - or won't - say when it will land again."

[link to newworldorderreport.com]

"According to BP officials the relief well will not be complete until sometime in August. That is 270 days."

[link to www.associatedcontent.com]

More unmanned space vehicles:

"The Dragon space capsule built by the California company Space Explorations Technologies (SpaceX) is poised to launch from a seaside pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during a nearly 3 1/2-hour launch window that opens tomorrow at about 9 a.m. The launch will test the spacecraft SpaceX plans to use to fulfill a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for 12 resupply flights after the agency's space shuttle fleet retires next year.

SpaceX is one of two companies with contracts for commercial cargo deliveries to the station. The other company is Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, which plans to deliver supplies to the station using its new Taurus 2 rocket and unmanned Cygnus space vehicles. The first test flights for those spacecraft are slated for next year."

[link to www.cbsnews.com]

They're called "private" but of course they're anything but.

"The Russian military closely monitored last year's flight of a new U.S. spaceplane but hasn't decided whether it needs a similar craft, a top general said Thursday.

Russia's Space Forces chief, Lt. Gen. Oleg Ostapenko, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the military knows all about the orbital manoeuvrs of the U.S. X-37B unmanned spaceplane during its maiden flight of more than seven months.

The U.S. Air Force said the primary purpose of the flight, which ended in December, was to test the craft itself, but classified its actual activities in orbit, leading to speculation about whether it carried some type of spying system."

[link to www.google.com]

Why isn't the media swarming all over this vehicle the way they did the space shuttles?

"China has successfully tested its first orbital unmanned spacecraft capable of staying in the outer space for at least 270 days and dealing with various defense tasks, including the destruction of communication satellites.

This Chinese robotic space plane will most certainly challenge US air force’s X-37B unmanned spacecraft that performed its first mission last year. This elusive spacecraft is capable of striking any target on Earth at any time and cannot be tracked down using the existing ABM means."

[link to english.ruvr.ru]

The Chinese make no bones about it, their vehicle is a weapon system, capable of (at least) destroying satellites, and with stealth capability. Is anyone surprised stealth is part of its mission?

"The X-37B's successor, the OTV-2, is currently being built by Boeing and will be deployed mid-2012."

[link to www.news.com.au]

Screw that ...

We want these:

[link to www.greyfalcon.us]
[link to www.ufohowto.com]

[link to www.laesieworks.com]

"NASA's space shuttles, which launch using liquid-fueled rockets and twin solid-rocket boosters, generate nearly 7 million pounds of thrust, making the shuttle fleet the country's most powerful launch system today, United Launch Alliance spokesman Mike Rein explained.

The next United Launch Alliance mission to fly is scheduled for March 4. That mission will use an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket to launch the Orbital Test Vehicle 2, the second test flight of the Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane."

[link to www.csmonitor.com]

[link to www.spaceflightnow.com]

"An Atlas 5 rocket crowned with a covert U.S. Air Force space plane rolled to a Florida launch pad Thursday to begin final preps for blastoff with a secret cache of military experiments."

Just more proof that NASA is an arm of the military, the US Air Force. I've been saying since the space shuttles were invented that they were prototypes for military vehicles, and now that should be patently obvious to everyone.