US To Launch Military Orbital Spaceplane 270
An anonymous reader writes "Not only is the US readying its first 100% military spaceplane for a November launch, but it's going to push NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission til 2009: 'The USAF and Boeing will launch the X-38B — the first military orbital space plane if you discount the secret military shuttle — on top of an Atlas V rocket in November. They want to test its flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry. And probably its anti-matter rays and nuclear bays and hyperspace engines too (but of course, they are never going to tell you that). However, there seems to be a conflict with the civilian space program which may push one of the Moon exploration missions to 2009.' Screw the moon. We have to defend ourselves against all those alien extremists from Mars!"
Re:Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but at least it follows the SSAS ("Slashdot Standards for Accuracy in Summaries") pretty well! Let's see:
- The summary calls the vehicle "X38B".
- The article calls it "X37B".
- But the article also has a picture of a craft clearly labelled "X40A". Of course that could just be a red herring.
Maybe the editors figured they'd just average the numbers from the article to be on the safe side?
Militarization of space ? (Score:3, Interesting)
So how many... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh dear god, Obama might be right! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty much a hardcore Republican that thinks Obama is a sort of Pharonic anti-christ, but, Obama's criticisms of NASA suddenly stand in stark relief when we suddenly see that the USAF is actually building a credible spaceplane and NASA, in its Constellation program, is admitting that it can't do it. Sure, one might argue that NASA is strapped for funds, but I like how the USAF had no problem turning to White Knight to test its stuff out rather than NIH'ing the whole program. Maybe we -do- need to kill NASA's manned space flight program.
Re:Militarization of space ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Way to win asymmetric warfare (Score:2, Interesting)