Military Space Shuttle

It all sounds very james bond but the truth is that the military actually never had a secret space shuttle.
Military space shuttle. However while there may be great interest within the military for a space force there s just not one out there. Military had a highly classified space shuttle of its own that was available for launch. The air force has two of these reusable space planes. To return to kennedy space center the x 37 is placed into a payload canister and loaded into a boeing c 17 cargo plane.
The shuttle landing facility at kennedy space center vandenberg air force base or edwards air force base. Crews deployed satellites conducted experiments and studied the earth. Once at kennedy the x 37 is unloaded and towed to the opf where it is prepared for its next flight. The five shuttles that went into space flew 135 missions.
Landing is done at one of three sites across the us. Then it built and flew its own mini shuttle drone and continues to test it on long missions. Instead it used nasa s space shuttle fleet until 2011. Why didn t we know about this thing the reaction seemed to go.
You could say that the x 37b stands on the shoulders of the space shuttle. The now retired space shuttle orbiters by contrast were 122 feet 37 m long and measured more than 78 feet 24 m from wingtip to wingtip two x 37bs could fit inside the shuttle s cavernous. The space shuttle was nasa s primary option for transporting astronauts to earth orbit between 1981 and 2011.