Boeing’s secret space plane set to fly again

[TexasTowelie]

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission 3 (OTV-3), the Air Force's unmanned, reusable space plane, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:24 a.m. Oct. 17, 2014. The OTV-3 conducted on-orbit experiments for 674 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent on-orbit for the OTV program to 1367 days. The X-37B is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B program performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.


After less than seven months on the ground, and after a record-smashing 674-day space run that landed in October of last year, The U.S. Air Force is looking to again launch Boeing's "secret" space plane.

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle has had three flights so far, each with increasing time in space. The Air Force will launch it again on May 20, reports CBS News.

"For this latest flight of the X-37B space plane ... the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office has teamed up with several partners, including NASA, to test experimental space technologies," CBS said.

The military has at least two of the 11,000-pound vehicles, which are about one-quarter the size of the space shuttle. The project started with NASA but was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2004 and is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. It was first launched in 2006.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/business/boeing/article/Boeing-s-secret-space-plane-set-to-fly-again-6256552.php

[FLPanhandle]

1. Secret?

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. It has been said back in the days of the Cold War......

that the Soviets could get more information out of a single issue of "Aviation Week and Space Technology" than we got out of them in a year.

Yeah..not secret. Certainly not to anyone interested in aeronautics.

[Jesus Malverde]

3. Meanwhile NASA's been gutted and sold to the private sector...nt