Mini-robotic space shuttle landing

Mini-robotic space shuttle landing

uk.news.yahoo.com

Unlike NASA's space shuttles which can stay in orbit about two weeks, X37-B is designed to spend as long as nine months in space.

The Air Force imposed a news blackout on the X-37B's activities while in orbit, though it was tracked by amateur satellite-watchers throughout its mission

(visit the link for the full news article)

Mod Edit: Review This Link: Instructions for the Breaking News Forums: Copy The Exact Headline

This is a cool story.

A small space shuttle just landed after testing parts for the new space shuttle.

They say it was blacked out in the news, however amateur astronomers have been tracking it the entire time it was up there.

Watch the movie and see how small this thing really is! I remember when it was launched, however I don't remember seeing a picture with a person next to it so you can see the actual size of the X-37B.

It would be cool to have a personal space shuttle of that size!





uk.news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

hi there.

here are soe great hi-res pics:

boeing.mediaroom.com...

gives you an idea of size.

snoopyuk

Interesting story - thanks for posting!

There's probably quite a lot of discipline involved in not reporting on something like this for 9 months...

Analysing how they go about convincing the news media not to report on it is probably quite a good way of better understanding the general behaviour exhibited by organisations wishing to maintain strict secrecy...

S & F for you.

reply to post by Jeanius


Nice video . My question is why were they wearing bio suits while working on the spacecraft after it landed?

-Al

reply to post by Jeanius


Wow that is so small. I wish I had one of those to send my brother into space for 9 months when he gets on my nerves.

PS: I freaking love your avatar

reply to post by AlBeMet


I think they are more of a heat protection suit, like the ones they wear near volcanos.
I'd imagine it'd be pretty hot after re-entering.

Cheers
Brady

To an observer on the ground, would it look like a satellite moving extremely quickly? That’s what I saw a few weeks ago, I haven’t seen anything like it before and I don’t know what else it could have been.

Thats grand. You know what annoys the hell out of me about the X-37B project? Its been running since 1990, and has only JUST completed the first trip. Thats twenty years. Twenty years to make a very small craft which hasnt carried a man yet. Im sure the technology in it is staggering, and Im sure that I couldnt make head nor tail of any one component, or the physics used to ensure its trajectory as it travels, but there is one thing I do understand.
If it is taking NASA and the DoD ( and you have to assume that bunch of useless genetic matter are in on this project) twenty years to effectively take a step BACKWARDS by making the craft tiny, and by not having crew aboard, then I really worry for the future of space travel and exploration . By this point we should have already been on mars for ten years, but the engines that could get us there are only JUST being built even though they were conceptualised by Arthur C.Clarke and others way back even before the moon landing! Thats almost half a century ago! Now you have NASA building tiny craft, which appear to have no use when considering manned flight, and regardless of the technological advances which the craft represents, it has been designed around a flawed premise. That being the idea that it is still ok to send missions to space that do not conform to the following concepts:

A) All missions launched to space must be manned.
B) All missions to space must be scientificaly based, and have no benifit to any government or agency of that government.
C) All missions aims must be exploratory, and aimed at reaching out to the planets, and eventualy the stars outside our own solar system.
D) All new craft designs should be aimed at getting mankind to space easier, faster, safer, and cheaper all at once.

Now , I dont mind NASA launching military hardware in the form of satelites and what have you, but the military should just do that crap themselves anyway! Its not as if they lack the funding to do that on thier own. They certainly do not need a specificaly designed craft, or the funding that it represents. Furthermore WE the people of Earth do not need any government having its own military controled space plane. That is just not right. We need to keep our militaries within our atmosphere!!! Otherwise when we do sod off to another planet, the dumb apes will only follow us and blow that planet to dusty ruin as well as messing this one up, and causing more trouble than they solve.

It really isn't hard to understand how the MSM is controled.

The days of MSM having real investigative reporters are over. The Talking Head on the screen is an actor working from a script, given to them by a writer, which is approved by management. So you really only need to control management, which is done through their salary package, by the board of directors. So if you can control the board of directors you control the complete system. This works for AP and UPI also.

Newspapers are going out of business all over the country, We are told that it is a sign of times, that people are getting their news from other places, so sales are down. NOT TRUE.

Newspapers quit having breaking news, investigative reporting, "Scoops" years ago and started just re-write of AP or UPI stories. So the product itself became redundent, which lead to a failure in sales.The last real "scoop" of any newspaper was Watergate, and that was 35 years ago, longer in the past than the current target customer is old. So, for the generation who would be the base of sales for the newspaper, have NEVER known a newspaper to be a good source for news. The Newspapers did it to themself.

I can remember when it was against the law in this country for the same person or cooperation to own a newspaper and a TV station, reason being that the people would be recieving news froim the same source. Look at US now.

It would be so easy for a "Real" newspaper to suceed today, all they would need to do is have "real" reporters who bust their butt in getting the "scoop". Sales would skyrocket overnight. But that is just a pipe dream in this country.

Sorry.

Your thread is a little redundant in that it has been reported widely.

BBC Article

Rev.

reply to post by The Revenant


Has it been reported here?

Looks like your link is less than 24 hrs old.

Not sure what your point is?

However thank you for the off topic comment.

reply to post by ThePyramidAgenda


It would seem that a heat protection suit would have an aluminum foil kind of look, not the case with the video.

I found a picture of similar suits in question.



I am looking for more info will post as I get it.

: Self-Contained Atmospheric Protection Ensemble suits, used for Space Shuttle rescue operations and any other event which calls for complete atmospheric isolation. Dressed in their SCAPE suits, workers are ready for the fueling of the Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft in the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility 2 (SAEF-2). SCAPE refers to Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble.

Link

Now the question still remains, protection from what?

-Al

reply to post by TrueBrit


The FIRST trip we know of. How do we know for sure this is trip number 1?



reply to post by AlBeMet


The real question is where has it been and what was it doing there.

reply to post by fixer1967


Yes but to get close to the answers we must work off of what we do know in the small details.

-Al

reply to post by AlBeMet


light amounts of radiation....

and to the person saying this wasnt reported ...well sorry but it has been reported by several different outlets.
and all the sat trackers and such have been following it all this time since the launch. they even stated on Space.com website 3 days before it landed that it was going to land...and where.

there is no conspiracy here , those of us in the industry have know all about this project for a long time, if it was a true black program we would not have known about it at all.


snoopyuk

I just realized that if amateurs across the world were tracking it...

You bet your ass every space agency was too!

Maybe they only did maneuvers while it was over US space?