X-37B military spaceplane launches

The project could lead to the military's first operational spaceplane

The X-37B, which has been likened to a scaled-down space shuttle, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 0052 BST (1952 EDT).

The military vehicle is unpiloted and will carry out the first autonomous re-entry and landing in the history of the US space programme.

The spacecraft can return experiments to Earth for inspection and analysis.

At 9m long (29ft), 4.5m (15ft), the reusable spaceplane is about one quarter the size of the shuttle, with a large engine mounted at the rear of the ship for orbit changing.

And while the space shuttle uses a fuel cell power system; the military vehicle is powered by a solar array and lithium-ion batteries.

The precise objectives and cost of the programme are secret. But the first few flights will allow officials to evaluate the vehicle's performance and ensure components and systems work the way they are supposed to.

More here...

Would be a bit dangerous, trying to send a nuclear warhead up there.

More likely to be a way of disabling hostile satellites or even capturing them and bringing the technology back for examination, or to position yourself in front of a hostile satellite to block its communications, or to even knock it out of orbit.

Not bad for a remote controlled robot in space, and that is before it carries anything.

Imagine being able to pull alongside any satellite you wished, and tamper with it (or repair it) remotely, mini Space Shuttle style.

With it being autonomous, its profile would be much lower, too. Launching a Shuttle with 7 crew is a bit in-your-face when you really want to examine that hostile satellite quietly to see what it is packing.

Best regards,
Vulcan.

That's a good point Magic.

They could drop that guy from the bottom of a larger aircraft, at altiude I would have thought.

But then they'd need to carry more propellant to get it into orbit on the vehicle itself.

Using the current staged process, they blast it up there using the rocket and then insert it into orbit without having to carry a load of fuel. So you get more payload and onboard space/weight for your buck than you would if you had to fire it up there by other means.

Launching from a vehicle isn't necessarily better - you still need more power/fuel on the vehicle itself, or again, a staged process with a rocket - that's easier to assemble and fly from the ground. You're only going to get 30-40k feet from an airborne launch which the ground based launch will attain very quickly, accelerating all the time to escape velocity, so it's not that much of a win given the infrastructure you need to launch airborne, for now anyway.