Weblog
03/06/06 09:09 AM: Military Space Shuttle
So that’s a U.S. Air Force XB-70, an experimental bomber that was taken out of development decades ago. I’ve seen one on display at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton. It was a pretty awesome bomber back in the day, but from what I recall it was rather unsafe and the project was scrapped.
Or was it?
This story over at Aviation Now claims that the U.S. government developed a two-stage military spaceplane, using a XB-70-like plane as the delivery vehicle.
“A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital.
“The manned orbiter’s primary military advantage would be surprise overflight. There would be no forewarning of its presence, prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights.”
