X-37B

It isn't a replacement for anything and it's not meant to be. It's a completely different platform, usage and program. Try to comprehend that. What ever the Military is using it for, they don't need it to be larger or carry personnel apparently. It's economic in that it is reusable and self sustaining once launched. The last shuttle flight was in 2011. This program began over a decade before that.

I wish we still had a currently running manned program as well (we do have one, Orion, being built and developed- this takes many years- it doesn't happen over night) but that has nothing to do with X-37B and it's missions. I have no idea why no one can seem to understand that. Good grief.

Orion is NASA's next program that will carry astronauts farther than ever before. So we do have a manned mission program. It just has not launched yet. You can read about Orion here: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-orion-58.html



Fully comprehended there chief. Calm down.

We have to spend massive debt money on useless military boondoggles. It's the 'Merican way.

Grandpa's phrase comes to mind, "That thing is about as useless as tits on a boar."
 
Fully comprehended there chief. Calm down.

We have to spend massive debt money on useless military boondoggles. It's the 'Merican way.

Grandpa's phrase comes to mind, "That thing is about as useless as tits on a boar."
Do you know what the program costs are exactly? How do you know that the program is useless? Do you have any evidence about this program and it's true value that you would like to share to back up your claim or is this just some unfounded rant? It's interesting that you just joined this forum yesterday and all you have posted thus far are four negative, snarky comments. Welcome to the forum.
 
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Do you know what the program costs are exactly? How do you know that the program is useless? Do you have any evidence about this program and it's true value that you would like to share to back up your claim or is this just some unfounded rant? It's interesting that you just joined this forum yesterday and all you have posted thus far are negative snarky comments. Welcome to the forum.

Ahh, added the forum to tapatalk out of boredom mostly. Didn't even realize which forum the original message came from.

As far as how I know how much this stuff costs and what not... shooting commies for mommy from space is what we do around here, son.

There's some nice golf balls over there...

4caabac0ed58bc6f674a12b7a68b5981.jpg


(Photo taken on the way to work. Could have gotten a little closer but wasn't going to waste time driving over there.)

There's five USAF facilities with no aircraft and only two with runways... within 200 miles.

And some of us work (or did anyway) on stuff like this... and know why that tower is just up the hill from the golf balls. And when the fiber got laid to replace it.

ab6d0452022184e7890470da81d1f3d7.jpg


And in the early 90s, the local CFIs and budding commercial pilots flew the fiber route watching for backhoes and construction ... until the redundant path could be trenched... to a cute little building sized Restricted Area on the VFR chart. Super easy to spot at night, lots of nice sodium vapor lights.

So yeah, I know exactly what the six-figure salaries are of folks who work on just the civilian telecom side of things. Keeping secrets ain't cheap and bribery is real. 80% of the questions asked by the nice interviewers are about where the person's money comes from and whether they're responsible with it enough not to need more.

Sarcasm about the overall costs of paying all the nice folk that work around here on it, and at numerous other golf ball places around the globe, is just one of the many services I offer. Nice folks, all. Really well paid. Smart. Flown with a few.

It's big business around here. Real big. The bosses with lots of twinkly stars on their shoulders visit regularly. They like stuff like space drones.

But money makes that world go 'round. Lots of lots of it.

I've got some engineering drawings of an official AT&T outhouse. Built real well for an outhouse but not going to survive a direct nuclear hit, according to the drawing. Good to know. Different tower than the one in the photo, but had a lovely "commanding" view of those golf balls. Was stashed in the back corner of the rather well built concrete building. Lovely fifties government style.

Make sure those tax checks don't bounce. Friends here need the money. It's all good. We've been "doing" government boondoggle space tech money around here for decades, man. Even the lowliest of the low on the totem pole are driving fairly new cars out of the gates at quitting time.

God and country, baby. It pays the fiber optic bills.
 
Ummmmmm.....okay. And your disconnected view and opinion over some random something, "golf balls", fiber optics from the 90's, AT&T and some tower, has what again to do with this current specific Military program/platform? What "commies are we shooting from space" exactly? Are you excited or even interested in the Orion program from NASA since that seemed to be a major complaint about not having a manned program, which we do have?

Ahh, added the forum to tapatalk out of boredom mostly. Didn't even realize which forum the original message came from.

Your post may have some meaning to you, but I have no idea what your point is or even what you are talking about. Glad to know that the only reason you joined this forum was out of boredom. That explains much. Do you also have Alex Jones and David Icke on tapatalk too? Just curious.
 
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Ummmmmm.....okay. And your disconnected view and opinion over some random something, "golf balls", fiber optics from the 90's, AT&T and some tower, has what again to do with this current specific Military program/platform? What "commies are we shooting from space" exactly? Are you excited or even interested in the Orion program from NASA since that seemed to be a major complaint about not having a manned program, which we do have?

Your post may have some meaning to you, but I have no idea what your point is or even what you are talking about. Glad to know that the only reason you joined this forum was out of boredom. That explains much. Do you also have Alex Jones and David Icke on tapatalk too? Just curious.

Don't be droll and act like you're welcoming and then be insulting. Alex Jones? Ha. Whatever. Seriously? Right there is good enough reason to tell you to shove it, but you asked, and I'll answer, since I'm not the sort of person to get "offended".

All of those things I mentioned are part and parcel of the U.S. Space Command and are all hideously expensive. If you don't know that, you're obviously quite unqualified to be judging someone who's been around it and stuff like it, and knows the price tag.

It's a monster budget. Unholy big overall and overall numbers are all you'll find for much of it without a lot of digging.

And no, most of us don't get any say in it. If you think you do, let us all know when you get the numbers. LOL.

That the cute little drone is flying under DARPA is a slightly different world, but it's all debt money.

Orion is fine. Ultimately we couldn't afford Shuttle and capsules are cheaper. Excited? Probably not as excited as watching STS-1, but I'll watch. I wasn't paying much in the way of taxes back then, and didn't know as much about the economics of Statism then either, probably also even believed some of the marketing to kids about "become an astronaut" and all that rubbish then too, so you know... times and perspectives change.

In the interim I learned that kids with glasses didn't get military pilot appointments back then (laser surgery didn't exist) and if you weren't "connected" or ex-Military you weren't likely to get anywhere near NASA back then either. Long time ago. No good wars on to relax the standards back then. Bad timing, I guess.

But I went on to become a pilot anyway, flew for fun for two decades, worked in telecom and IT and made a nice living (on quite a few government boondoggles even, including some juicy FAA, NRC, SAIC, and Pacific Fleet telecom contracts back in the day... from the vendor/tech contractor side as either a direct vendor or sub-contractor, and also worked at places like that tower photo... and learned the history of them...), bought an airplane, and started working on CFI ratings just for fun and to give back a little.

100% debt free in my 40s, so yeah... I've had a good run. No complaints here. But that will help explain why I'm not particularly impressed with massive debt-driven stuff like that little shuttle-like drone thing. I'm impressed with the tech, but I know what stuff like that costs. It's usually not worth it.

But the brass will have their toys... always. No doubt about that.

Manned stuff? It's hard to top Shuttle. A truly amazing and unholy expensive to operate machine. But damn cool.

A former relative by marriage (not a relative anymore, I suppose) is currently aboard ISS. Nice guy. Had all the right family connections. Family had serious money. Also busted his butt. He worked for it. I'm not PC at times and I'm not sure the amount of money spent to have him hitch a ride up there from the Russians was money well spent in the grand scheme of things, but whatever.

He's there. Might as well go if you can. Nobody in that world is going to ask me if I wanted to pay for it. Hope he enjoys the ride.

Far more impressed with Scaled than anything these days. They don't get the benefit of systemic theft to pay the interest payments on their debt, or to make their payroll, for the most part. If self-made is a spectrum, they're way on the other end of the linear scale from the silly drone thing.

Let us know when you have the complete budgetary numbers for say, Pine Gap. LOL. They have golf balls too.

Oh. All that equipment that got me to debt-free by mid-40s? All on the scrap heap by now. Lots and lots of millions spent on all of it. Government goes through tech like I go through socks. And pays WAY too much for it. BTDT. Got the paid off mortgage to prove it. And I was just civilian logistics stuff. Making all the voices and ones and zeros flow for those things. The actual projects? Wooooo. Money. Money. Money.

(NRC was the most fun, by the way. The Verizon on-site tech was a hoot. "Oh hell, the alarms are going off again. In two minutes I won't be able to get across the hall to my office because there will be kids with M-16s in the hallway. Call ya back in a sec! We'll reschedule to fix this later." Super nice guy. Hope he finally retired.)
 
I know it's a full moon, but holy hell................thanks for another Military/Government rant. At least you're consistent. And really, I have no interest in your financial well being, your job history, your home mortgage, your vision issues, antennas and your long winded, disconnected, semi-incoherent personal dissertations on what you perceive as the Military industrial complex, taxes, waste of money, whatever. Perhaps you could seek a better platform for your obvious agenda.

BTW, Do you happen to know someone named Qutch or SkyRock? lol Considering how many pms you have been having on your second day here as a member, I don't believe that you came here by accident or out of boredom as you stated, either.

.

.
 
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I know it's a full moon, but holy hell................thanks for another Military/Government rant. At least you're consistent. And really I have no interest in your financial well being, your job history, your home mortgage, your vision issues, antennas and your long winded, disconnected, semi-incoherent personal dissertations on what you perceive as the Military industrial complex, taxes, waste of money, whatever. Perhaps you could seek a better platform for your obvious agenda.

BTW, Do you happen to know someone named Qutch or SkyRock? lol Considering how many pms you have been having on your second day here as a member, I don't believe that you came here by accident or out of boredom as you stated, either.

.

.

No agenda here. And don't know any of those folks. But your paranoia is pretty funny. They must have been interesting characters.

I simply offered a pretty simple opinion about an overly expensive space toy in response to a post about it. I said that we once were at the pinnacle of manned missions, and now we watch the Generals play with space drones.

You're the one who engaged and wanted to know why, and started right off the bat with personal insults. Not I.

You're also the person who expanded the discussion into Orion and other projects. I'm just responding to your questions.

If you didn't want discussion about the silly thing and just wanted to rah-rah it, just say so. Sheesh. And if you didn't want a pilot and telecom guy, who's worked on a government boondoggle calling it like it is, well, okay.

I DGAF, really.

Spend more money on a few more of 'em. Why not? They're cute. Might as well get some use out of all that runway at the SLF... doesn't really bother me.

Stuff's just inanely expensive for whatever you think you're getting out of it. Send those checks.

I'm pretty much WYSIWYG, not political, think politicians spend a lot of money on stuff nobody actually needs, and not particularly impressed with the modern variety who act like they hate each other, while attending each other's dinner parties. Partisans today aren't the partisans of old, there're much more cult like now. It shows in your weird tangent into Alex Jones, of all weird things? (Is Alex involved in space weapons testing platform policy these days? He wasn't last I checked.)

Reigning in their spending on silly stuff like this space drone, appears to anyone with a personal budget, like it would be what intelligent people would do.

I'm an engineer and a pragmatist. I just say it's an expensive toy, when it's an expensive toy. Shuttle was too, and never really met its original sales pitch goals, but it ended up a workhorse for other things. It also inspired folks.

This thing? It won't be inspiring anyone who grew up watching manned missions. It's okay, we know those aren't possible anymore at those price points. It was fun while it lasted. Now we cheer the military space drone operators, I guess, and wonder who they're pissing off with it today.

Rah... rah... golf clap. Yay... Go team...

LOL!

Wake me up when we find something where a couple of folks like Crippen and Young actually have to strap in, sit in it and go somewhere again. Orion, at least will be that.

Send up some more folks like Story Musgrave, or Owen Gariott (or any others in a long list of names, but those two stand out for me personally) with the mega-bucks, not stuff designed mostly to antagonize other nations.

Human space flight is neat. Expensive AF, but neat.

Space war tech testing drones? Color me unimpressed. Mostly with the reasoning to even have one.

Not so much the tech. The tech, I'm sure, is wicked cool. They're not exactly going to be releasing any nifty engineering docs for any of us to go read. LOL.

Check out the repeated buzzwords in this puppy... mmm. Tasty marketing babble...

http://www.space.com/29479-x-37b-space-plane-s-capabilities-explained-by-boeing-video.html

Various sources estimate the average Boeing Director level salary at about $190,000/yr without bonus plan. I'd guess ol' Ken there easily bumps over that. He's been doing MILCOM for a very long time.

I'm sure he's a great guy and deserves every penny for the work he does. I'm just giving an example of one person in a cast of ... who knows ... as further evidence of the price tag.

Sounds like the little ship tested the new propulsion system for the next generation of higher bandwidth MILCOM birds. The last batch was estimated (low) as a $2 Billion dollar contract. We'll just assume the next ones won't be cheaper.

It always helps to write out all the zeros instead of saying "billion...

$2,000,000,000,000 or easier even that that to grasp...

A stack of $100 bills 136 miles long. Going to need a lot of duffle bags to carry all that.

It also did some materials tests.

(Or so they say... whatever.)

It's the "take this stuff up there and see if it works" ultimate RC airplane. Heh. Losing all those duffle bags of cash on orbit, would be a shame.
 
Wow. It's like Qutch and Skyrock had an internet love child.

I was thinking the EXACT same thing.

So I'm guessing these are folks who disagreed with y'all in the past, and the place really isn't interested in actual discussion about how these things get paid for? Kinda closed minded, like that?

Like I said, I wasn't really paying attention to where the article about the space toy came from when I responded to it, but I can see when a group has gotten into a little cult state against adult conversation about such things, and avoid the topic if it pleases the crown/locals on a particular board.

Adding this place to tapatalk was not truly 100% out of boredom. Been lurking and reading for years, but not nearly enough to recognize folks. Just made it easier to do it while mobile.

Show up, give an honest opinion about billions in spending, and the welcoming committee is some whack job who starts off with Alex whatever his name is? The whack job on the Internet?

Y'all are weird. I'm just here to see stories about what my students are going to face in the real world. Poor kids actually believe the glossy slick silliness from the magazines about aviation sometimes, so I just read to see where they might really be headed.

The space toy and its budget are down around a 1 out of 10 on priority list. I just posted thinking it was a discussion board.

You don't want discussion, I'm cool with that. My bad for not noticing which site the post came from.

Carry on with spooging over robot space planes. Haha. The tech is certainly cool. While piloted sectors of the biz will be gobbled up by similar over the next couple of decades and some new ones will be added.

We had an interesting discussion about ENG (broadcast - Electronic News Gathering) going from multiple piloted aircraft (fixed and rotary) when I was a new pilot, to most cities having a single leased ship operated by all the newsies on another board, recently.

I suspect that world is about to be replaced by unmanned camera platforms in the not too distant future. Certainly before my working years are over with. That'll hurt rotary wing friends.

Other sectors it won't be trusted and it'll take longer.

Robot spaceplanes? Why not. Toss a trillion at it if you like. It's all good.
 
So I'm guessing these are folks who disagreed with y'all in the past, and the place really isn't interested in actual discussion about how these things get paid for? Kinda closed minded, like that?

Like I said, I wasn't really paying attention to where the article about the space toy came from when I responded to it, but I can see when a group has gotten into a little cult state against adult conversation about such things, and avoid the topic if it pleases the crown/locals on a particular board.

Adding this place to tapatalk was not truly 100% out of boredom. Been lurking and reading for years, but not nearly enough to recognize folks. Just made it easier to do it while mobile.

Show up, give an honest opinion about billions in spending, and the welcoming committee is some whack job who starts off with Alex whatever his name is? The whack job on the Internet?

Y'all are weird. I'm just here to see stories about what my students are going to face in the real world. Poor kids actually believe the glossy slick silliness from the magazines about aviation sometimes, so I just read to see where they might really be headed.

The space toy and its budget are down around a 1 out of 10 on priority list. I just posted thinking it was a discussion board.

You don't want discussion, I'm cool with that. My bad for not noticing which site the post came from.

Carry on with spooging over robot space planes. Haha. The tech is certainly cool. While piloted sectors of the biz will be gobbled up by similar over the next couple of decades and some new ones will be added.

We had an interesting discussion about ENG (broadcast - Electronic News Gathering) going from multiple piloted aircraft (fixed and rotary) when I was a new pilot, to most cities having a single leased ship operated by all the newsies on another board, recently.

I suspect that world is about to be replaced by unmanned camera platforms in the not too distant future. Certainly before my working years are over with. That'll hurt rotary wing friends.

Other sectors it won't be trusted and it'll take longer.

Robot spaceplanes? Why not. Toss a trillion at it if you like. It's all good.

No, they're both prone to going off on a tangent.
I always thought CSOC was kind of neat!
 
No, they're both prone to going off on a tangent.
I always thought CSOC was kind of neat!

Ha. Well I've been known to also, but honestly I'm old enough to remember when that was the entire point of online message boards.

Nowadays they all have their weird quirks about what topics and discussions are "cool" and what aren't.

Spaceplanes == money in the world I worked in. Spooks and "sensitive" government agencies spend dump trucks full of it. Hell, trainloads of it.

Hell, FAA isn't even all that spooky and they paid a bunch of us a freaking small fortune to install telecom gear that was a decade out of date when they bought it through GTE Federal Systems, and wasn't installed for four more years.

We tried to tell them we were three entire product lines ahead of that thing by the time they ordered some, but they insisted.

Who was I to complain! Go hang out at JFK in a big ugly lime green building and shove some EPROMS and floppies into the 15 year old box to
"Upgrade" it and show GTE how to do the rest of the TRACONs and centers, well into the hard drive era. Haha.

The door to the telecom room is to the left rear of the conference room they showed on TV throughout the whole TWA 800 thing. The conference room sure looked spiffy. Wood panels. Fancy conference table. All that.

The rest of the place? Lime green concrete.

The checks cashed. The GTE guys gave me a tour of the old DUATS support center when I visited them in Chantilly. Well if a tour means walking from the lab a couple doors down to the room and opening the door.

Mainframes and modems down in he basement, baby. Chillin' with the DUATS folks before the Internet really existed.

Nice folk. Drove nice cars. Had big houses. Lots and lots and lots of money...

Nothing really changes in that world.

Nice to meet y'all. I'll try to figure out what the forum rules are on spaceplane fanboi posts more carefully in the future. LOL.
 
Shouldn't this chatbot be a little better at this each time? Seems like this one's getting worse.
 
We had an interesting discussion about ENG (broadcast - Electronic News Gathering) going from multiple piloted aircraft (fixed and rotary) when I was a new pilot, to most cities having a single leased ship operated by all the newsies on another board, recently.

I suspect that world is about to be replaced by unmanned camera platforms in the not too distant future. Certainly before my working years are over with. That'll hurt rotary wing friends.

Other sectors it won't be trusted and it'll take longer.

The PHX market went from 5 to 3 ENG helos, with three stations combining to one helo, and the other two keeping theirs for now. This coming on the heels of the midair between the Ch3 and Ch15 helos 10 years ago. Wouldn't be surprised if it goes unmanned. Traffic watch planes in that same market have gone from 3 to 1, and not even sure if that 1 still flies.
 
The PHX market went from 5 to 3 ENG helos, with three stations combining to one helo, and the other two keeping theirs for now. This coming on the heels of the midair between the Ch3 and Ch15 helos 10 years ago. Wouldn't be surprised if it goes unmanned. Traffic watch planes in that same market have gone from 3 to 1, and not even sure if that 1 still flies.

Yeah, Denver went from a peak of seven (two fixed wing, five helos) to one leased helo, quite some time ago.

Probably best saved for another thread, though. I hear the assembled crowd doesn't like tangents. :)
 
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