Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days in orbit

Re:Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days ... by peeters on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @10:44AM (#7178104)

Interesting concept, but I wonder about the economics.

A telephone pole has a volume of about 3 million cubic centimetres. Tungsten's density is ~20 g/cm^3, so we're talking about 60 000 kilograms of tungsten. At around $40/kg, that's ~2.5 million dollars per rod just in raw materials.

But that's ignoring the cost of bringing a 60 metric ton rod into orbit, of course. You'd need a Falcon Heavy launch per rod, ignoring the problematic dimensions (let's assume you can cold weld a few pieces together in space). That's at least another $60 million per rod for the launch costs.

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Re:Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days ... by morsch on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @06:49PM (#7181027)

60t of lead, on the other hand, will go for a mere 120k USD, at about double the volume. Not sure if the effect will be the same (it certainly sounds like a good way to poison vast swathes of land).

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Re:Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane passes 400 days ... by jimktrains2 on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @11:34AM (#7178469)

Just toss some "small" asteroids down then. (More an issue once we get to the point of interplanetary war, but still cheaper than manufacturing pure tungsten rods).

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