US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward orbital record

Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by dotancohen on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @02:02AM (#31916962)

  > and mostly burned up on reentry due to the bad heat tiles

This is not true so far as I know. If you have some source documenting heat damage to the orbiter I'd love to see it. I believe that the Buran lost about half a dozen tiles on reentry, contrast with STS-1 which lost more than a dozen. In fact, the maiden launch of Columbia was actually delayed over a year because when transporting the shuttle something like 2000 tiles were lost on the flight - subsonic on the back of a 747.

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Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by jessaustin on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @11:32AM (#31921600)

Wow that was a good test to run, even if by mistake.

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Re:US military's mysterious X-37B space plane zooms toward o... by dotancohen on Thursday June 30, 2022 @02:44AM (#31929327)

The 747 flight? Yeah, in retrospect STS-1 was lucky on so many counts. And so were at least half a dozen other shuttle flights. In one incident a missing tile on descend allowed the hot plasma to interact with the airframe. By sheer 1 in 24,300 chance that tile was covering a steel antenna, which melted. Had that been almost any other tile, it would have melted the aluminum airframe.

In my opinion, STS-1 was far more dangerous - and lucky - than even Vostok 1. Vostok 1 at least was using a rocket that had a flight history. And no shaky solids. And a proven heat shield. And though both flights had ejection seats, only one was able to launch those seats clear of the rocket exhaust.

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