Space Plane: Mysterious US military aircraft launches

Post by denlekke » Mon, May 18, 2020, 12:20 AM UTC

NortySpock wrote: post #38

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Well, the budget of NASA is $22.6B/year for all projects combined. And as others have said, this is a small unmanned reusable vehicle, with a few flights under it's belt, after all of the reusable R&D was done for the Space Shuttle. If I were to lick my finger and lift it into the wind, I'd estimate this flight cost between $0.5B and $1.5B, and most of that would be the gear that they are testing, given that the spac…

Post by astronautjones » Mon, May 18, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, May 18, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

awinder wrote: post #22

One day after https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12617475806665523... can’t be a coincidence right

Post by jrockway » Mon, May 18, 2020, 12:43 AM UTC

zrail wrote: post #20

jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers tend to write for a very low reading level. Flourish is nice for readers of a long novel (for whom the words are as important as the story itself), but the goal here is for as many people to understand the content as possible. That includes people that don't natively speak English, children, etc.

> Newspapers tend to write for a very low reading level. I see what you did there.

Post by kortilla » Mon, May 18, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

astronautjones wrote: post #43

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

Sat here in lockdown, I have just rewatched Matt Damon's The Martian and yes, we want to go up and out. I am so glad someone is still trying. I am also blown away by the American Federal budget - this is a classified military space program . How much does one of those cost ?!

ironically, the post below this about unemployment fraud with "potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new alert issued by the U.S. Secret Service." is full of people who don't really understand the scale you're working with with federal money