Sierra Nevada Needs A Fact Checker For Its PR Hype
FYI @SierraNevCorp WRT your claim that the #DreamChaser landing will be the "first runway landing since @NASA‘s shuttle program ended a decade ago". Here's a 7 May 2017 USAF tweet. Try Googling. Just sayin' https://t.co/15kgEUb5zH
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 4, 2021
I wonder why Boeing never got funding for the X-37C. It was supposed to be bigger than the X-37B, with a payload bay and capacity such that you actually could use it as a shuttle for astronauts if you put them in a custom seating arrangement loaded in the payload bay.
Perhaps the X37B had some technical problems a la 737 MAX and CST-100 Starliner?
They’re still using the X-37B, so I don’t think it’s that. It’s probably more that it would compete with Starliner.
Don’t think so. One of the two X-37B’s which launched on 17 May 2020 is still in orbit.
Of course them still using it doesn’t mean it hasn’t had problems. Boeing’s recent track record has not been exactly sterling.
It’s probably more likely that the X-37 is an orphan program. It started as a NASA program, then became a DARPA program, then became a AIr Force program. And now it’s a Space Force program. Development and deployment – seemingly quite inexpensive over the past 20 years – has been spread out widely.
It’s notable, I think, that it flew on a Falcon 9 in 2017. At that point in time, Falcon 9 was mostly only flying only NASA and Commercial payloads. It did one NRO launch (NROL-76) earlier that year as a qualification launch. It did more DOD launches in 2018-2020. But the X-37 flight was the only other DoD launch that year. The DOD (at the time) puts the general stuff on Atlas Vs and the REALLY important stuff on pricy Deltas. I think putting the X-37B on the Faclon, as it was still being evaluated, was symbolic of “if we lose the X-37B on this flight, it’s not a big deal”. They like it, but they can live without it.
I think the X-37, having been built and flown, is inexpensive, reliable, useful and interesting enough to fly (and keep flying) but not so much as to invest significant money into expanding the program with either more X-37s or a larger X-37C. Even beyond the question of how useful a larger X-37C could be, being able to have two (or more) X-37Bs orbiting in formation , could do some really interesting experiments.
But you can’t do that with just two X-37Bs, unless you sacrifice having any flying for some refurbishment period.
Just a thought. I’ve loved the X-37B program since the start. And an X-37B reusable space plane flying from a Falcon 9 that lands is conceptually just a great thing to have in our nation’s inventory. It represents an unexpected, but fascinating interaction of technologies. But I’ve never seen anything with the X-37B program that makes me think it is a program headed towards expansion. I think it keeps going because there’s some interesting returns on it and it’s inexpensive to keep going.
Hopefully I’m wrong and in the next few years they’ll roll out an improved X-37C.
As far as I can determine the X-37C was just a concept put forth by Boeing in 2011 and it would be launched on the Atlas V.
X-37B launches in a fairing. Crew would require dealing with the aerodynamics to allow launching without one, the same obstacle Dream Chaser has…doable perhaps, but a major complication. It’d also take a lot more than “custom seating in the payload bay”, you need life support, crew access on the pad, a docking hatch, an escape system, etc.
If in the age of commercial orbital space launch, Government-space has any role in operating vehicles, the X-37 or something very much like it is pretty the gold standard of what a program should look like.