thoughts on the X-37b?
love your blog btw!
Considering it's the only operational spaceplane at the moment, I think it's awesome! It is the only space plane design of the late 1990s and early 2000s to have survived (albeit being transferred from NASA to DoD) to this day.
But as to what it is actually doing in orbit for the DoD, it's hard to tell since it's mission is highly classified. It was designed by NASA to repair satellites in orbit and some have speculated about it might spy on other nations' satellites (possibly sabotage them) or deliver weapons to orbit.
But it's hard to know for sure since it doesn't operate at the same orbit as other satellites nor has it been observed by amateur astronomers tracking it.
I haven't done much speculation on it since I don't have enough info. But if I had to, I'd say it is some kind of spy sat that doubles as a test platform for different kinds of equipment and tech. The space shuttle did similar things and had launched a sat for testing the effects on materials and tech in the 80s and 90s. But I also wondered if it was used to give the USAF experience with a spaceplane since there was a program to build a reusable SSTO spaceplane (which was later cancelled).
Anyways, that's all for now. Thanks for the ask!
