Secret space plane lands at US air force base after unknown two-year mission

Actually that was my next guess. It's probably trying to catalogue all the satellites out there and maybe trying to hack them.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I doubt they'll be flying to Mars anytime soon

I also think it is more mundane than that. This unit, within limits, can go pretty much where you want it to go in short order, which is much different than re-tasking satellites that are busy with many other things. I think it is a glorified communications satellite prototype, but certainly, it could be more...

meh dreaming within a dream... I am guessing nothing useful came abound.. Or we would have heard about it by now..

No matter how you look at it, man was not designed to live in space....

Ah yes, the x37-B... This is the craft that ROBBED me of my first, as far as I knew at the moment, UFO sighting... The dirty dog.

In any case (and in spite of its robbery of my fantasies) I'm thrilled to see that it landed safely back here on Terra Firma, this is a very important platform that can do much for us mere humans stranded here on Earth.

originally posted by: ItCameFromOuterSpace
a reply to: Swills

They were filming reality space porno's.

2 thoughts came to mind....

It was either doing a 5 year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations....

or....

it was only a 3 hour tour....


Who knows what they were doing... My guess though is its able to haul live astronauts. I am wondering if we have a military space station somewhere up there.

a reply to: blacktie

"EVENTUALLY"

The unmanned will take as long to mature as the manned.

a reply to: Xcathdra

The only way it carries an astronaut is if they curl up in the fetal position in the cargo bay.

Spying on the Middle East, obviously. That's the blatant vibe I'm getting. After all, the military now owns it. Why ELSE would it be "top secret" or "classified?" For no reason?? LOL.. Secretive, hidden agenda bulls***t, as usual. Hence the secrecy of its purpose... Otherwise, just SAY what you've been using it for, if there's NOTHING to hide?
Hopefully it's been monitoring extraterrestrial activity, too...

a reply to: Kromlech

There's a lot that's classified that has nothing to do with spying on anywhere. There are much more efficient cheaper ways to watch anywhere than an unmanned spacecraft.

Are you sure it' hasn't been counting knuckle hairs and reading
license plates from entire cities at once ?
positive ?

It is small. Puny compared to the old shuttle, and smaller than most business jets. With a drogue chute, I would think you could land it anywhere a Cessna 172 can go.

I could think of one clever nefarious thing that a little drone like that would be useful for. Planting fist-sized satchel charges on satellites you don't like. (Don't even have to frag them, enough impulse to send them spinning would do wonders.) Not that they really would be using it that way. But if anything ever happened with a technically advanced adversary, that would be a handy thing to have in place. All their eyes in the sky and comms could go bye-bye at the push of a button.

a reply to: pauljs75

Very interesting idea .

at least the tiles lived up to expectations then, no holes in this sucker

a reply to: Swills

Maybe its been monitoring whats been going on on the Moon!

We've read lots about there being some kind of 'Alien base' on the Moon.... maybe there are also 'Aliens' on the Moon (Inside the base... back and forth).

a reply to: AnteBellum

There could be a number of reasons why they flew it - but its hardly secret if we are talking about it here.

Love the change of face darrling - most becoming.

a reply to: Shiloh7

I agree completely.

I've been watching for info on this the past few years and it does pop up from time to time. They just didn't go out of their way with making information known.
I'm still more concerned over the selectivety of our media system on this and many other events our agencies perform.

As for my face I felt the need to go "awe naturale" for the season.

originally posted by: blacktie
as part of the 'secret' space program it's questionable if it was really a two year space experiment.

Couldn't it be both "secret" and be a "space experiment" at the same time?

Definitely very intriguing - I'm going to take a conspiracy laced punt that the mission was to park alongside strategic satellites planting detonators on them for future use should that be required. Taking them all out at the flick of a switch.

a reply to: badBERTHA

The problem with that theory is it's tracked in orbit. Even amateurs follow it while it's up.