Lockheed could have used the SR-71 to put the DR-21 drone into orbit and accomplished the same feat decades ago.



The only reason they failed in the DR-21 Drone program is that they were trying to use it in Earth's atmosphere for reconnaissance......they were scared to death if they put it into Orbit China or Russia would have thought it was a missile warhead and fired off their nuclear weapons.


There was a fear of putting military weapons in space in those decades.

Russia had it's own X-37b decades ago with a laser they were going to put into Orbit. Their leader abandoned it because he feared putting military weapons into space.


Why aren't Americans scared their Government has a military weapon in Space? The X-37b is under DOD so it's a weapon.

About the orbit not being a secret...

True, but it can, and does, change orbit.

Speculatively I think the XB-37 is a platform for miniaturization in LEO, I even had links a while back.

Consider the tech today in miniaturization of nearly everything electronic down to nano. The tech has arrived and the benefits are obvious, cost of deployment, hard to detect. Basketball sized surveillance satellites have stealth built in as product, the small pick-up-truck sized XB-37 bay can carry and deploy many of those as well as acting as one itself. The success of remote automation in space has few failures outside of launch related mishaps, which are rather rare for NASA the past decade. In fact NASA has zero beyond earth orbit remote automated space probe failures since 2000. The Atlas Mediums have a 100% success launch ratio and the expensive Heavy Lifts become unnecessary.

Now having a land able reusable mini Space Shuttle that can stay in LEO for 2/3rds of a year you have a LEO launch test–DoD economic–platform, doing a job men don't need to be sent to do.

Do you suppose the X-37 B is a mystery to foreign governments or just the average citizen? Take the U2 for example. The U.S. knew about the U2 and the Soviets knew about the U2, but it was in the interests of both governments to keep it secret. Maybe something like that is going on with the X-37 B? Or maybe it's so boring they would rather not destroy the mystique. I imagine they are training worm astronauts for a secret Mars mission.