"Boeing X-37B" will bring people into space
The company "Boeing" said they intend in the near future on the basis of the spacecraft "X-37B" to create a new advanced reusable spacecraft that will be able to deliver a variety of cargoes to the ISS (International Space Station). The company's experts also believe that the enlarged version of "X-37B" in the future will be able to deliver people to low-Earth orbit.
One of the divisions of Boeing Phantom Works conducts work on the X-37B project only by order of the American air force. The military use this spacecraft to conduct their secret research and development of the same secret space technology. Now the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2) class apparatus performs tasks for the US Army and is in space. The first OTV-1 spacecraft spent in space 224 of the day, 9 hours and 24 minutes. He was in outer space from April 22 to December 3 2010 of the year. "OTV-1" broke the record for the duration of stay in space of spacecraft reusable.
October 7 Arthur Grantz, Chief Engineer of the Experimental Systems Division at Boeing, said that X-37B could be upgraded and converted without additional investment. He will be able to perform the same tasks as the European ship “ATV”, the Japanese “HTV” and the Russian “Progress”.
At the moment, the ship "X-37B" has such dimensions - the width of the 4.5 meter and the length of the 8.8 meters. Its weight is slightly less than 5 tons. The upgraded reusable ship, called X-37C, will have the same proportions for large dimensions. The project "X-37C" can be easily implemented at the current level of technological base. And each assembled node, which can be used in a new spacecraft, has already been tested in near-earth orbit using the X-37B program.
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