This comes from the military budget; they can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as a rounding error. The US Navy has 11 large fleet aircraft carriers, 9 assault carriers, when the rest of the World considers two carriers to be a lot. Schools hold bake sales to buy supplies, the Pentagon/The Congress spends a Trillion USD on a new manned fighter we don't need just to shovel pork into as many Congressional districts as possible.
In a similar vein as our Carriers, we have 123 military satellites. Since the X-37 is maneuverable and reusable, it might be cheaper in the long run than more satellites.
Enlighten a simpleton here please, why do "we" need to leave the planet. I am far from a space nerd but I do know that neither mars or any solar object other than other is known to contain climate that is better or would even come close to earth's climate even with no polar ice caps and extreme global warming.
Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on warming , coastal areas and certain eco systems will be lost but you will still no matter have most parts of the big continents in tact. The land there exists now can support humanity even with 10x the population (if made arable). I mean things like beef and single story housing would certainly be rare.
How about building new cities by the rockies and great planes and build things like the hypertube (whatever it:s called) to make emmigration easier. Have friendly eco-immigration policies to avert a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis. Heck, even "colonize" the sahara,antarctica or ocean beds! Half your problem is solved on earth once you desalinate ,irrigate and build viable transport.
Not sure, but I would imagine it's less than you'd think.
The spaceplane was originally a NASA project that DoD picked up after most development was done, and it launches from commercial rockets (eg they've used SpaceX rockets to launch these before).
I would assume that the payload (experimental sensors and components, most likely) are more expensive than the amortized-per-mission cost of the vehicle.
Well, the budget of NASA is $22.6B/year for all projects combined. And as others have said, this is a small unmanned reusable vehicle, with a few flights under it's belt, after all of the reusable R&D was done for the Space Shuttle.
If I were to lick my finger and lift it into the wind, I'd estimate this flight cost between $0.5B and $1.5B, and most of that would be the gear that they are testing, given that the spacecraft itself is fully reusable.
It kind of reminds me of another bit about the size of the US military budget (What's the largest Air Force in the world? The US Air Force. What's the second largest Air Force in the world? The US Navy)[1]. In terms of budget, the United States probably has at least the top 2 biggest space programs in the world and depending on what parts of the military/intelligence budgets you lump together, #1 is probably not going to be NASA.
[1] I believe that this is actually true if you combine the Navy and Marine Corps and don't count helicopters
ironically, the post below this about unemployment fraud with "potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new alert issued by the U.S. Secret Service."
is full of people who don't really understand the scale you're working with with federal money
The press around the X-37B continues to perplex, it's particularly disappointing to see this "super secret but let's talk about it constantly" article using the word "very" 3 times.
I think it was drilled into me by the age of 12 to avoid "very" in written English in order not to obviously oversell, and yet here it is from a professional writer working for the BBC
In general the BBC prioritises simple writing, a reasonably low reading level, and common words to make it as accessible as possible. They don't pay much attention to ideas of artistic writing and they aren't looking to use a different adverb or adjective every time for the whimsical sake of it. It's a public news service, not a mid-atlantic magazine.
Newspapers tend to write for a very low reading level. Flourish is nice for readers of a long novel (for whom the words are as important as the story itself), but the goal here is for as many people to understand the content as possible. That includes people that don't natively speak English, children, etc.
I always assumed there's a chosen public facing secret plane with some PR management to represent the secret program in general and there's numerous other behind the scenes secret crafts without the PR.
I also assumed many of the silly rumors of antigravity or whatever planes are intentionally manufactured as part of the PR so if some information of an actual plane leaks it'll be buried with the noise.
This way, the formal channels could say "oh nonsense, that's just silly rumours, The Official Secret Plane is this one over here".
It also puts outsiders at a true zero knowledge position since there's no indication as to what is and is not nonsense.
Then you could have say, a top scientist defecting, taking all the secret plane information with them, write detailed books and lectures exposing all of it and people would just be like "oh, look at that silly conspiracy kook over there! how goofy"
Pretend it's already happened and there's scientifically sound diagrams, correct math, etc... Nobody would be able to find it among the garbage.
Wife and I stopped in at Edwards AFB perhaps around 2000? Maybe 1998 or so.... Have to dig up the photos to be sure.
The armed guard let us on the base so we could head to Dryden Flight Research Center (now the Armstrong Flight Research Center). In those days I figured you just tried to do a thing until someone said you couldn't. It didn't occur to me that there would be a problem driving in to Dryden.
The guard asked a lot of questions, but, pre 9-11, we had no problem getting in.
Dryden has a small museum, a few hangars. One hangars has the original M2-F1 lifting body.
I distinctly remember this space plane (or it's predecessor?) being towed down a small road near Dryden. I guessed it was some sort of X-plane. We were on a sort of mini-tour at that point, being shown around, and I believe there was an attempt by the tour-guide to distract us from that plane.
> ... test the idea of using microwave beams to send solar power to Earth from space ... Build a big solar array in orbit, the idea goes, and it could collect enough sunlight (unfiltered by atmospheric effects or clouds,) to generate a powerful beam of microwaves. A collection station on Earth would then convert that beam into useful power ... down the road he said he hopes it will lead to a futuristic clean power source that could benefit everyone — and give the U.S. a new near-monopoly over a global energy supply.
That brings back some nostalgia. I remember playing one of the early Sim City games and that was one of the types of power plants you could set up. It had a small chance to malfunction, causing the beam to miss the collection station and set everything in the surrounding area on fire.
They are talking about beaming power to drones, but thinking a bit larger, I wonder if it be feasible to have a high power laser transmit energy to a satellite and then have a cluster ala Starlink act as an relay to direct the power potentially anywhere on earth. Maybe you could power airplanes from space? Sounds like Sci-Fi, but apparently all the components and technologies exist, and people must have been working on it for a while, when they just letting the public in on it.
Didnt' China try to do this a few years back but was shutdown for some reason? Also, this would double as a great military weapon so I am sure that is being assessed as well.
Or, this information can be thrown in intentionally to divert attention from the real mission. Make it plain and boring so that people quickly lose interest and switch to next topic in the newsfeed.
"One of the experiments will test the effect of radiation on seeds and other materials."
Are seeds the baseline in testing biological effects in space?
Asking as I would of thought that testing seeds in space had been one of the most tested avenues and with that, a known consistent form of biological matter that can be compared with.
Certainly if you wanted to test a space shield, you could test with something that can contain a few seeds and see how the results compare. Though as one of the tests is for energy transmission, then seeing if such equipment increases biological impact in proximity is worth knowing for future plans. Seeds certainly robust enough and can crudly test them by growing them as well, so I can see many reasons for them on many missions.
I find it amusing that I now consider it so wasteful to throw away all that rocket gear just to launch a payload :-).
I also wonder if they still have the "crew return" insert for the ship. Early in its life it was envisioned as a way to bring the full crew of the ISS to earth.
The Space Force is now responsible for all DOD launches. However I believe that the payload itself still belongs to the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Most of the people operating it may be "on loan" to the Space Force, but aren't actually members yet (I think there's only ~100 people so far in the Space Force)
It is transferred to the space force - the launch name is USSF-7 (https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/atlas-v-ussf-7). The Space Force operates out of the Department of the Air Force (like how the Marine Corp operates out of the Department of the Navy), so it's it's civilian head is still the Secretary of the Air Force - it's military head is the Chief of Space Operations.
Given the frequency and consistency of narrative with which it appears in the press, at this stage I'm convinced it's an empty UAV used entirely for some marketing purpose
That they send it up for years at a stretch mostly indicates that they have not discovered any good uses for it yet. If it were in demand, they would need it back before two years have passed.
Keeping it parked in a hangar when it's not needed would get embarrassing. Leaving it in orbit makes it seem to be doing something, particularly if you pretend it's all hush-hush.
all the money on military, and not in investing in healthcare, improve public health responses, increasing financial reward for the front line workers that are sacrificing themselves for the greater society. In my opinion, this is sad. I would rather have this money being written as a check to every nurses and doctors served in COVID19.
I dont disagree that we spend too much on defense but the idea that we should stop all spending on science to help out some nurses is super strange.
Its akin to saying we should stop funding nasa be ause who needs space travel.
Also please stop glorifying a set profession as some kind of ulturistic calling. Theyre in it for the money and prestige, and frankly, wouldnt be there otherwise.
If you want to thank someone, thank the delivery guy, the supermarket clerks, the flight attendants, or the casual staff out of the job right now.
These people are feeling the brunt of this. These people are the front line.
If you want a more fair system for everyone, in fact you need to remove about $1.5 trillion (~42%; equivalent to two copies of the US military) from annual US healthcare spending. That just gets you down to matching what most Western European nations are spending per capita.
$3.6 trillion goes into US healthcare, providing healthcare workers - including doctors and nurses - with among the highest salaries and benefits vs their peers globally. You have to go to Switzerland to find comparable industry pay.
That is five times more than what is spent on the military. You can't slash enough spending out of the military to make a dent in that gigantic expense problem.
It's not the healthcare workers suffering in the US system, it's the patients that are suffering from paying the wildly inflated salaries in the field.
If you want a more fair system, you'll need to start by reducing incomes in the industry to levels you see in Britain, France or Germany. That means slashing doctor and nurse pay across the board. You have to shift the system toward the benefit of patients and away from the workers in healthcare. You'll also need to smash the US education system for healthcare simultaneously and remove the guild protection racket that makes becoming a doctor so expensive (you can't normalize US healthcare pay without normalizing the education costs).
You have to get spending down to near $2 trillion to create a system comparable to what you see in Western Europe, so you need to slash $1.5 trillion in spending. That means you need to fire massive numbers of doctors and nurses, squeeze resources (ration service as in all universal systems), and slash pay for every single worker in the industry.
A hazard bonus as part of one of the stimulus programs for front-line workers? Sure why not. None of it is going to be paid back anyway, it's all going to be perpetually monetized by the Fed. They deserve it in my opinion. That's very different from discussing the cost problem in military vs healthcare however. We need to remove maybe $150-$200 billion from the military to get down to a more reasonable spending level for what the US should be doing. You don't fix the biggest problem in healthcare - the extreme spending per capita - by adding more spending.
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta... "U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2018, reaching $3.6 trillion or $11,172 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent." The report itself finds Medicare spending is 21% of healthcare spending and Medicaid 16%, or about 1.3 trillion (with a "t") between them.
I genuinely believe that if Americans knew what the rest of the Developed world gets for it's tax dollars vs. what Americans have to put up with for their tax dollars, they would riot in the streets.
There's a very good reason the major news outlets in America never directly compare America to other Developed countries, and only ever compare it to undeveloped or "evil" countries (China, Sudan, Iran, Russia).
Journalists need to stop using adjectives like "mysterious" when writing about the X-37B. While the aircraft's technology and missions are classified, there is nothing mysterious about the existence of the plane itself.
Probably is a coincidence - these launches are planned and contracted far in advance, and Trump didn't seem to care last time one was launched during his administration.
Someone hacked my computer - it looks like the president of the United States of America is posting some kind of ironic meme video about himself on Twitter.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|5 years ago|reply
I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program. How much does one of those cost ?!
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|5 years ago|reply
In a similar vein as our Carriers, we have 123 military satellites. Since the X-37 is maneuverable and reusable, it might be cheaper in the long run than more satellites.
[+] [-] badrabbit|5 years ago|reply
Wouldn't it be cheaper (more humane as well) to "colonize" earth? For the next 100 years,even with full on warming , coastal areas and certain eco systems will be lost but you will still no matter have most parts of the big continents in tact. The land there exists now can support humanity even with 10x the population (if made arable). I mean things like beef and single story housing would certainly be rare.
How about building new cities by the rockies and great planes and build things like the hypertube (whatever it:s called) to make emmigration easier. Have friendly eco-immigration policies to avert a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis. Heck, even "colonize" the sahara,antarctica or ocean beds! Half your problem is solved on earth once you desalinate ,irrigate and build viable transport.
[+] [-] azernik|5 years ago|reply
The spaceplane was originally a NASA project that DoD picked up after most development was done, and it launches from commercial rockets (eg they've used SpaceX rockets to launch these before).
I would assume that the payload (experimental sensors and components, most likely) are more expensive than the amortized-per-mission cost of the vehicle.
[+] [-] NortySpock|5 years ago|reply
If I were to lick my finger and lift it into the wind, I'd estimate this flight cost between $0.5B and $1.5B, and most of that would be the gear that they are testing, given that the spacecraft itself is fully reusable.
[+] [-] zrail|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|5 years ago|reply
[1] I believe that this is actually true if you combine the Navy and Marine Corps and don't count helicopters
[+] [-] astronautjones|5 years ago|reply
is full of people who don't really understand the scale you're working with with federal money
[+] [-] shockinglytrue|5 years ago|reply
I think it was drilled into me by the age of 12 to avoid "very" in written English in order not to obviously oversell, and yet here it is from a professional writer working for the BBC
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristopolous|5 years ago|reply
I also assumed many of the silly rumors of antigravity or whatever planes are intentionally manufactured as part of the PR so if some information of an actual plane leaks it'll be buried with the noise.
This way, the formal channels could say "oh nonsense, that's just silly rumours, The Official Secret Plane is this one over here".
It also puts outsiders at a true zero knowledge position since there's no indication as to what is and is not nonsense.
Then you could have say, a top scientist defecting, taking all the secret plane information with them, write detailed books and lectures exposing all of it and people would just be like "oh, look at that silly conspiracy kook over there! how goofy"
Pretend it's already happened and there's scientifically sound diagrams, correct math, etc... Nobody would be able to find it among the garbage.
At least that's how I'd structure it.
[+] [-] w-ll|5 years ago|reply
Dr. Strangelove
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|5 years ago|reply
The armed guard let us on the base so we could head to Dryden Flight Research Center (now the Armstrong Flight Research Center). In those days I figured you just tried to do a thing until someone said you couldn't. It didn't occur to me that there would be a problem driving in to Dryden.
The guard asked a lot of questions, but, pre 9-11, we had no problem getting in.
Dryden has a small museum, a few hangars. One hangars has the original M2-F1 lifting body.
I distinctly remember this space plane (or it's predecessor?) being towed down a small road near Dryden. I guessed it was some sort of X-plane. We were on a sort of mini-tour at that point, being shown around, and I believe there was an attempt by the tour-guide to distract us from that plane.
[+] [-] _lbaq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|5 years ago|reply
> ... test the idea of using microwave beams to send solar power to Earth from space ... Build a big solar array in orbit, the idea goes, and it could collect enough sunlight (unfiltered by atmospheric effects or clouds,) to generate a powerful beam of microwaves. A collection station on Earth would then convert that beam into useful power ... down the road he said he hopes it will lead to a futuristic clean power source that could benefit everyone — and give the U.S. a new near-monopoly over a global energy supply.
[+] [-] dx87|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tabs_masterrace|5 years ago|reply
They are talking about beaming power to drones, but thinking a bit larger, I wonder if it be feasible to have a high power laser transmit energy to a satellite and then have a cluster ala Starlink act as an relay to direct the power potentially anywhere on earth. Maybe you could power airplanes from space? Sounds like Sci-Fi, but apparently all the components and technologies exist, and people must have been working on it for a while, when they just letting the public in on it.
[+] [-] dokument|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
Maybe Ronald Regan's Star Wars program is finally getting implemented.
[+] [-] inamberclad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgudkov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zenst|5 years ago|reply
Are seeds the baseline in testing biological effects in space? Asking as I would of thought that testing seeds in space had been one of the most tested avenues and with that, a known consistent form of biological matter that can be compared with.
Certainly if you wanted to test a space shield, you could test with something that can contain a few seeds and see how the results compare. Though as one of the tests is for energy transmission, then seeing if such equipment increases biological impact in proximity is worth knowing for future plans. Seeds certainly robust enough and can crudly test them by growing them as well, so I can see many reasons for them on many missions.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|5 years ago|reply
I also wonder if they still have the "crew return" insert for the ship. Early in its life it was envisioned as a way to bring the full crew of the ISS to earth.
[+] [-] hyperpallium|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NortySpock|5 years ago|reply
https://www.ulalaunch.com/about/news/2020/05/17/united-launc...
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icegreentea2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shockinglytrue|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
Keeping it parked in a hangar when it's not needed would get embarrassing. Leaving it in orbit makes it seem to be doing something, particularly if you pretend it's all hush-hush.
[+] [-] NiceWayToDoIT|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pengaru|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
Even uBeam does work, it's just not very efficient
[+] [-] russli1993|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waheoo|5 years ago|reply
Its akin to saying we should stop funding nasa be ause who needs space travel.
Also please stop glorifying a set profession as some kind of ulturistic calling. Theyre in it for the money and prestige, and frankly, wouldnt be there otherwise.
If you want to thank someone, thank the delivery guy, the supermarket clerks, the flight attendants, or the casual staff out of the job right now.
These people are feeling the brunt of this. These people are the front line.
[+] [-] adventured|5 years ago|reply
$3.6 trillion goes into US healthcare, providing healthcare workers - including doctors and nurses - with among the highest salaries and benefits vs their peers globally. You have to go to Switzerland to find comparable industry pay.
That is five times more than what is spent on the military. You can't slash enough spending out of the military to make a dent in that gigantic expense problem.
It's not the healthcare workers suffering in the US system, it's the patients that are suffering from paying the wildly inflated salaries in the field.
If you want a more fair system, you'll need to start by reducing incomes in the industry to levels you see in Britain, France or Germany. That means slashing doctor and nurse pay across the board. You have to shift the system toward the benefit of patients and away from the workers in healthcare. You'll also need to smash the US education system for healthcare simultaneously and remove the guild protection racket that makes becoming a doctor so expensive (you can't normalize US healthcare pay without normalizing the education costs).
You have to get spending down to near $2 trillion to create a system comparable to what you see in Western Europe, so you need to slash $1.5 trillion in spending. That means you need to fire massive numbers of doctors and nurses, squeeze resources (ration service as in all universal systems), and slash pay for every single worker in the industry.
A hazard bonus as part of one of the stimulus programs for front-line workers? Sure why not. None of it is going to be paid back anyway, it's all going to be perpetually monetized by the Fed. They deserve it in my opinion. That's very different from discussing the cost problem in military vs healthcare however. We need to remove maybe $150-$200 billion from the military to get down to a more reasonable spending level for what the US should be doing. You don't fix the biggest problem in healthcare - the extreme spending per capita - by adding more spending.
[+] [-] jseliger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|5 years ago|reply
There's a very good reason the major news outlets in America never directly compare America to other Developed countries, and only ever compare it to undeveloped or "evil" countries (China, Sudan, Iran, Russia).
[+] [-] lihaciudaniel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] littleweep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryKissinger|5 years ago|reply
> Mysterious US military aircraft
Journalists need to stop using adjectives like "mysterious" when writing about the X-37B. While the aircraft's technology and missions are classified, there is nothing mysterious about the existence of the plane itself.
[+] [-] b34r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowapple|5 years ago|reply
Hell, I'm tempted to write him in this time around.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] azernik|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobush|5 years ago|reply