X-37 UAV has potential
X-37 advances, now what? Well, here are some ideas to take this trade to a whole new level and plateau in American Ingenuity and Innovation. NASA has learned a lot from testing the X-37 and will now turn it over to DARPA, which makes a lot of sense.
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2554
[http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/History/HistoricA…ges/X-37_lg.jpg]
Should we also look at a device mounted on this ship to ionize the air or atmosphere upon entry? If the ship were to be launched from a large blimp, super blimp, it could be dropped and once cleared, pointed up into the sky and fired up the thrusters and ionizers to rid the ship of any friction that might occur in the atmosphere. Very little energy would be needed and taking it to an asteroid, the moon or around the planet to get back in would be extremely efficient. If the X-37 were unmanned it could also serve as a deterrent with an explosive charge and be used as a smart munition all the way to the target by ionizing the air along the path to re-entry, in fact there would actually be no re-entry. , just an artificial extension of a space tube that could fly through its target as a single-mission detonation ICBM. You could drop from a balloon near the equator from a blimp ground base in the Hawaiian Islands, fly to the other side of the world and drop uninvited on an avowed enemy of peace and freedom, glide effortlessly to your destination at a very high altitude. high. speed rate, virtually unnoticed and accurate to within one square foot. Some of that ability would certainly serve the political will of the free world very well, wouldn’t it? Unit costs would be quite small once designed and built in large numbers.
The X-37 could also be a good re-entry vehicle that could ionize the air on its re-entry using a high energy beam and then slowly lowering the energy for a fast to slow descent using the frictional force of increasing molecules. of the atmosphere to gradually slow the ship down at a predetermined rate. There would be less wear and tear on the ship, and stability and control could come from parts of the ship not entirely in the wake tube of the expanse of space created from the ionizing atmosphere device that would be located forward of the HQ and facing forward. the intended direction of flight. The flight control guidance airfoils could extend to an area outside the tube of the space created to prevent the craft from spinning within the tube and spinning or losing control. Special landing areas could also be created for such a method of flight, so that relative upwind ionization within the ship’s flight path could slow the aircraft to near a standstill, thus allowing it to float in artificial space. For landing. There’s no need to flair or worry about a hard landing. The cushion of non-ionized air would slow space and the waves generated by ionization would put the spacecraft in a simulated antigravity state for the time it took to land. All this could be done in an automated way.
Such a system would allow for a larger payload, eliminate the need for landing gear systems, save space on the craft, or market larger versions for space tourism later on. Less weight means more payload, more systems. Such a ship could have telerobotic units on board to repair the International Space Station or the Hubble Telescope, mine asteroids, or drill below the moon’s surface for samples. Such a unit could be used to intercept incoming asteroids on a collision course with Earth with enough payload for gravity manipulation devices, laser cutters, explosives, or attach and use its self-propulsion to move the small body off its current trajectory.
NASA was smart to let DARPA have this technology for the needs of protecting our nation and becoming part of the missile defense system, strategic surgical strikes against adversaries, and defending Mother Earth from the catastrophic demise of a great direct asteroid impact that would undoubtedly cause death and destruction. and climate change that would make the current change in global warming totally negligible.
If we look at the X-37 as a full version 1/24 mini scale ship, you can see the benefits of having such a ship to take people to the moon in the future for visits, scientific expeditions, visits to Mars, in orbit around Venus, Tourists to the lunar surface or sightseeing trip. By adding the benefits of ionization of the atmosphere, we reduce the thermal friction issues that caused the last space shuttle to break, we reduce surface wear, and we have a truly safe and inexpensive spacecraft.
