With the news of the landing of the X-37B Friday I guess I’ll throw my two cents in on what it could be doing.
- It’s an advance spy plane that can orbit space taking pictures and video at high resolution, making it harder to detect and bring down.
- It’s an unmanned bomber that sits in orbit with it’s payload waiting for someone on the ground to give it the order to launch the bomb(s) it carries.
- It’s the prototype for an unmanned warp speed ship to try and bring the Vulcan’s to earth.
- It’s a cheaper and safer way to test new technology in the harsh environment of space, before building a new manned spacecraft, without putting human or animal life in danger.
How much you want to bet it’s #4? But why would the Air Force be running the vehicle instead of NASA? Well lets think about this, NASA has been moving more to exploring deep space, and sending out small probes, while the Air Force has been more focused on space (near earth orbit space to be exact) for the last twenty years. Let’s face it with every major government wanting to put space stations in orbit, it makes sense that the U.S. government would think about the military applications and hand it over to the military. Does that mean I agree with it? No. But that’s probably what’s happened. Personally I think space should be like the south pole, a neutral place for all countries of the world to explore.
So should everyone get upset over this vehicle? No, it’s just a test vehicle. If they start arming it, then we should get upset. Heck go ahead and tell the government that we don’t want space to be armed, let them know now so when the day comes that do do it anyway we can say we told you not to do that so we’re voting you out.