johnbpatson

Just put it up there out of sight and forget about it… Saves hanger space. And what ever you do, do not bring it down, there is no budget for the fuel for another launch! Or am I being cynical? I do wonder though what the cadet satellite was designed to do, seek out breweries?
And maybe the sailors should look at advances in solar power on the ground in the last three years (there are now sails for yachts which produce solar power which were not invented 908 days ago) rather than trying to interpret waving dials from space.

billthedog

Wrong side of the bed this AM, John?

graeme

I expect reasonable efficiency with tax dollars once you have a viable system. But as ANY R&D department knows - public or private. 80% of an R&D budget tends to go nowhere. It’s the 20% that produces “new art” that advances civilization.

Sailors with solar sails are not going to tell you anything about long duration solar panel systems in space getting bombarded with particles and radiations that the earth’s atmosphere absorbs. You gotta go try it.

And there will be blind alleys and leapfrogs. I think it was a Ray Bradbury sci-fi story that described a mission to Alpha Centuri where the crew were put in a state of chemical suspended animation so they would still be young when they got there. Though only 4.3 light years away - the fastest spacecraft was still going to take thousands of years to get there. When they arrived they were greeted by humans. A “warp drive” had been invented after they departed and later generations got there first.

johnbpatson

Nah, it was “attitude” they tried to nail me on…

Alan_Hoffman1

The X-37 is a highly successful, cost effective program (unlike so many current aerospace projects) that gets little attention and no love from the aviation community or the public.

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Mike_S

That’s a long time to mess with other nations’ satellites. Great job!

Skypark

That’s because it does it’s job quietly & efficiently, leaving no handles for negativism to grasp. Of course not knowing what, exactly, it IS doing also helps.

ag4n6

We have no idea what most of the missions were with this vehicle, and previous ones were clearly reported as mostly “classified”. This vehicle is unique in the world as compared with our adversaries and our ignorance of its missions is no excuse for criticism.

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bserra

Totally agree with You, Dale. The others criticism comments are worth of bs or, more properly, s*.

Richard_G

This type of satellite system seems to be the future solution to space junk.
Send it up for a mission for five to ten years, then have it fly back for an upgrade and refueling.
Only thing that will cure the space junk problem.