spaceshuttles?

my teacher said something interesting, he said that sence the airforce owns the space shuttles taht he belives they are long range bombers. anyone else have an idea about them?

They have much better LRBs I dont see why they would use the shuttles

well, it gives them an excuse for flying them all the time...........

but i dont think that they are long range bombers

They cannot be used as bombers, for heat resistant tiles cover the shuttles bottom side; where weapon bays would be. Although the cargo bay could be used to carry bombs with heat shields, USAF would never use it in this case...unless we were involved in a desperate war - and even then we probably wouldn't use it as a weapons launch platform. The shuttle is pretty much good as done.

[Edited on 19-1-2004 by TheConservative]

your teacher is full of bull #

Way to tell him.

I have to agree with Krazy Ivan - Your teacher is full of it...
The B-2 bomber is the most accurate bomber of all time - able to drop 80 GPS guided munitions in one dump and they ALL hit their targets - this is unpresidented in the history of war in the air.
Where is the need to make the Shuttle a bomber?

Shuttles & Spaceplanes
The shuttles are for the most part transport trucks and research labs...

Have you considered the possibility of "black ops" operational spaceplanes?

There is some pretty compelling evidence that something is going on in that area.

One interesting note, the Germans in WW2 had an effort underway to build a spaceplane with which to bomb New York.

A German scientist named Saenger developed it, and it was called the "Silver Bird" or "The Amerika Bomber".
Their design was one that was not actually an orbital spaceplane like the shuttles, (I think orbit requires an escape velocity of 17,300 mph) but rather a design that skipped off layers of the upper atmosphere...

A rocket powered hypersonic vehicle and it was on the drawingboards in 1938.

Sanger "Silverbird", designed to bomb America

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X-20 Dynasoar
After the American Operation Paperclip gathered up all the scientific data on German advanced technology research the US came out with plans to build a space plane in the late 1950's...
It was called the X-20 Dynasoar, with a rocket booster to get it in orbit, it was the first concept for an Orbital Reentry Vehicle, (ORV) that saw actual development.

The X-20 spaceplane was cancelled by JFK's defense sec, Rbt McNamara in December 1963 right before it was supposed to start in production. (Some believe that rather than being killed off it went "black".)

The X-20 Dynasoar

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Conclusions?
After the Dynasoar there were numerous other spaceplane projects involving different shapes, propulsion methods, etc.

These spaceplane projects went on through the 60's, 70's.. then the Space Shuttles came out ... all the way to present day with the X-33 and Hyper-X projects.

The fact remains this is old technology that simply continues to be updated with every new spaceplane project, and there have been ample signs that something very fast and able to fly very high is lurking about out in the deserts of the western US.

Couple that with the age & history of this technology and one begins to see how naive it is to assume that there have been no spaceplanes surrepticiously developed and operational over the 66 years since Sanger drew up plans for Silverbird.

Hypersoar - space bomber platform
currently under development at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

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Intelgurl







[Edited on 19-1-2004 by intelgurl]

just out of interest, was it your spelling teacher who
came up with that hair-brained idea?

hahahaha!

nice pic the first one the silverbird I mean...