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That's an interesting document, but also somewhat schizophrenic. Although it appears to date from 2005 or so, it reads at times like a document dating from somewhat earlier. For instance, why no mention of T-SAT, which was a program in development then? Why mention Discoverer II, which was long gone?The list of a whole bunch of what are essentially ASAT payloads for the Space Maneuver Vehicle is interesting. Was any of that stuff approved? Was any of it funded? Why carry so many (up to 10) on a single SMV? Of course, if the SMV can actually maneuver, then you can hit a bunch of targets with it. Still, that seems dubious and doubtful. And why do this on an SMV when you could find an ELV in shorter time?It's just really hard to fit that document into context. Space Command has in the past proposed some nutty and ill-formed ideas, usually space weapons systems. What often happens is that they get overruled and told to focus on more mundane stuff like comsats. Maybe that's what we're seeing here--they're ignoring the comsat stuff and going nuts about SMV and exotic minisat weapons.But... maybe some of those minisat ideas survived in some way and that's the payload for the X-37B. Still... you don't need a semi-reusable vehicle for that.
That's an interesting document, but also somewhat schizophrenic. Although it appears to date from 2005 or so, it reads at times like a document dating from somewhat earlier. For instance, why no mention of T-SAT, which was a program in development then? Why mention Discoverer II, which was long gone?
The list of a whole bunch of what are essentially ASAT payloads for the Space Maneuver Vehicle is interesting. Was any of that stuff approved? Was any of it funded? Why carry so many (up to 10) on a single SMV? Of course, if the SMV can actually maneuver, then you can hit a bunch of targets with it. Still, that seems dubious and doubtful. And why do this on an SMV when you could find an ELV in shorter time?
It's just really hard to fit that document into context. Space Command has in the past proposed some nutty and ill-formed ideas, usually space weapons systems. What often happens is that they get overruled and told to focus on more mundane stuff like comsats. Maybe that's what we're seeing here--they're ignoring the comsat stuff and going nuts about SMV and exotic minisat weapons.
But... maybe some of those minisat ideas survived in some way and that's the payload for the X-37B.
Still... you don't need a semi-reusable vehicle for that.
