Hamilcar, when will you just shut the f#ck up about who is and who is not an "expert" and about whatever the f#ck  that has to do with *ANYTHING*?!?!  Your condescending bullsh!t is so obnoxious that I have absolutely NO idea how DA manages to keep his cool as much as he does.

 

I definitely am interested in your opinions about this and basically all other subjects, as I perceive you have a lot of interesting things to say.  I wish you could just say them while sparing all of us your snide insults that you tag on to almost everything you post when it is in response to someone you disagree with.

 

For example, do you have anything else to share regarding the HTV-2?  The first test flight was yesterday.  A former co-worker of mine has some involvement in the program with respect to assessing the aerodynamics of the shape.  I read a nice little paper on it that included a figure showing the vast difference in apogee between a ballistic missile and this vehicle over the same range.  Skipping along the atmosphere at M20 should greatly shorten any detection time (for the very few (one?) target nations that can even detect anything incoming from space, i.e., some parts of Russia from some angles).

 

I'm bringing this up because of the question regarding "weaponizing space" and even if involvement in such is debatable regarding the X-37B, it seems to me that while these two programs are obviously very different, the HTV-2 is at least conceived as a weapon and it does go into space (albeit for a very short time compared to the X-37B).  Here's a Fact Sheet on the HTV-2 program:

 

DARPA FACT SHEET

National Security Challenge

 

The U.S. military seeks the capability to respond, with little or no advanced warning, to threats to our national security anywhere around the globe.

 

Program Objective

 

DARPA?s Falcon HTV-2 program objective is to create new technological options that enable capabilities that address urgent threats to our national security. The program is developing and testing an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable, hypersonic air vehicle that glides through the Earth?s atmosphere, at incredibly fast speeds ? Mach 20 and above.

 

Program Goal

 

The specific goal of the program is to conduct flight tests that demonstrate and validate technologies crucial to flight at hypersonic speeds. The first flight test, scheduled for April 20, 2010, is a rocket launch of a new gliding air vehicle known as HTV-2. Designed for DARPA by Lockheed Martin, the vehicle will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on an Orbital Sciences? Minotaur IV Lite rocket. HTV-2 will be accelerated into the Earth?s upper atmosphere, separate from the rocket, descend into the atmosphere, and glide across the Pacific Ocean at more than 13,000 miles per hour. HTV-2 will reach its destination in less than 30 minutes and impact in the ocean north of the Reagan Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 4,100 nautical miles.

 

The key technical challenges and achievements of the HTV-2 program are the design of an innovative high lift-to-drag aerodynamic shape, advan

6. Its also a working spacecraft, a very expensive one.

 

Nobody asks the right questions. What is up there near to the OTV-2 that we wanted to put the OTV-2 close to it?  Why did we spend all that money for a long duration mission to do that thing? We are testing it for MONTHS? Why?

 

For example, do you have anything else to share regarding the HTV-2?  The first test flight was yesterday.  A former co-worker of mine has some involvement in the program with respect to assessing the aerodynamics of the shape.  I read a nice little paper on it that included a figure showing the vast difference in apogee between a ballistic missile and this vehicle over the same range.  Skipping along the atmosphere at M20 should greatly shorten any detection time (for the very few (one?) target nations that can even detect anything incoming from space, i.e., some parts of Russia from some angles)

 

Skipping across the atmosphere allows you to do several things. It keeps you low on the radar horizon. It allows you to change direction suddenly. It prevents a simple ballistic orbital track solution. It extends the actual range on a volume of fuel carried, because you can dip into the atmosphere and use the atmosphere as an oxidizer for a scram-jet burst of acceleration, And last of all, it allows you, to make it SMALL, cheap and conventional  and get around the strategic arms limitation definitions that would force us to count our conventionalized ballistic missiles as nuclear armed.  Since these devices are neither cruise missiles nor ballistic missiles, nor operates in space as an orbital space system, we stay "legal".     

 

I'm bringing this up because of the question regarding "weaponizing space" and even if involvement in such is debatable regarding the X-37B, it seems to me that while these two programs are obviously very different, the HTV-2 is at least conceived as a weapon and it does go into space (albeit for a very short time compared to the X-37B).  Here's a Fact Sheet on the HTV-2 program:

 

"It extends the actual range on a volume of fuel carried, because you can dip into the atmosphere and use the atmosphere as an oxidizer for a scram-jet burst of acceleration"

 

Thanks, that is something I did not think of.  Maybe that would enable a manned outgrowth that can power its way through an egress from the target area (regaining altitude and speed) and actually recover at some base further downrange.

 

The document I read also showed what I think was the scheduled flight path/ground track, and it certainly did appear to include a very significant amount of maneuvering of what looked like at least a few hundred miles away from the "straight line" ground trace from Vanderberg to splashdown, with a big turn at the end down to the destination.