Modern Elmo
5th Dec 2010, 18:55
Here are some post landing phots of the X-37B spacecraft. Mr. PPrune, since the X-37 hs no human crew aboard, please feel free to move this post to a different part of pprune if you have the urge to do so.
The landing of the X-37B at Vandenberg AFB | Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=265891&id=78118717073&l=f24f107baa)
There's also some X-37 videos, if someone else cares to post them.
Looking at the photos, I'm genuinely impressed with how clean and undamaged the X-47's thermal protection surfaces look. That seems to be a big improvement over Space Shuttle.
I think the black, ventral surfaces have visible lines or seams because the black surface segments overlap like shingles or fish scales to allow for thermal expansion. In other words, the visible lines may not really be gaps.
The ground crew guys are probably wearing haznat suits becasue the X-37's orbital maneuvering propulsion system uses hypergolic propellants, which are quite toxic. The purpose of some of the tubes connected to the spacecraft are to purge and absorb any residual hypergolic stuff.
Replacing the Shuttle's hypergolic Orbital Maneuvering System with a liquid oxygen/methanol OMS was on the list of suggested improvements for the Shuttle, but NASA bever got around to that.
The landing of the X-37B at Vandenberg AFB | Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=265891&id=78118717073&l=f24f107baa)
There's also some X-37 videos, if someone else cares to post them.
Looking at the photos, I'm genuinely impressed with how clean and undamaged the X-47's thermal protection surfaces look. That seems to be a big improvement over Space Shuttle.
I think the black, ventral surfaces have visible lines or seams because the black surface segments overlap like shingles or fish scales to allow for thermal expansion. In other words, the visible lines may not really be gaps.
The ground crew guys are probably wearing haznat suits becasue the X-37's orbital maneuvering propulsion system uses hypergolic propellants, which are quite toxic. The purpose of some of the tubes connected to the spacecraft are to purge and absorb any residual hypergolic stuff.
Replacing the Shuttle's hypergolic Orbital Maneuvering System with a liquid oxygen/methanol OMS was on the list of suggested improvements for the Shuttle, but NASA bever got around to that.