Re:Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days ...
by Gravityloss on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @10:23AM
(#7177945)
28 km/s? It would be more than escape velocity (11.2 km/s), where did you get that? Low earth orbit is around 8 km/s. Still not totally the same as and ICBM, but could be done.
But why would you stuff the rods in an X-37B? You could just launch a light satellite without all this re-entry stuff and you'd get many more rods for the same mass... or then you could use a smaller launcher.
The X-37B is basically a reusable payload fairing, a very heavy one at that. Oh well, it isn't even that because the rocket requires another outer expendable payload fairing.
But why would you stuff the rods in an X-37B? You could just launch a light satellite without all this re-entry stuff and you'd get many more rods for the same mass... or then you could use a smaller launcher.
The X-37B is basically a reusable payload fairing, a very heavy one at that. Oh well, it isn't even that because the rocket requires another outer expendable payload fairing.