U.S. Air Force taps SpaceX to launch next X-37B spaceplane mission

[Elderberry]

Spaceflight Now June 6, 2017 Stephen Clark

A month after an X-37B mini-space shuttle glided to a landing on Kennedy Space Center’s runway in Florida, the U.S. Air Force announced Tuesday that the spaceplane’s next mission will launch in August aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the first time.

The previously-unannounced launch agreement will use a Falcon 9 rocket to loft one of the Air Force’s two Boeing-built X-37B spaceplanes, reusable craft that have circled Earth for a combined 2,085 days on four previous flights.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, displaying a model of the unpiloted spaceplane, disclosed the service’s launch plans for the fifth X-37B mission during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday.

“This is the model of the X-37, which will be going up again,” Wilson said. “It’s a reusable vehicle and will be going up again on top of a SpaceX launcher in August.”

More: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/06/06/u-s-air-force-taps-spacex-to-launch-next-x-37b-spaceplane-mission/

[kevindavis007]

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[endicom]

We shoulda stuck with Dyna-Soar.

[Joe Wooten]

We shoulda stuck with Dyna-Soar.

I've seen engineering analyses that indicated the Dyna-Soar's active cooling system would have failed during re-entry. There is a reason the X-37 uses an aluminum frame with the shuttle type ceramic tiles for re-entry protection instead of an essentially unprotected Rene 41 metal airframe/skin with flashing water for cooling. OTOH, there were other studies that said it would have worked.