Steve K
Flashlight Enthusiast
The average Space Shuttle mission was seven days in length. The craft above was in space for roughly 450 days. You know how much a Shuttle crew can accomplish in a week, so what went on for over a year on the X-37B?
well, without the need to sustain the parasitic life form on the spacecraft, it has the freedom to hang around in orbit for quite a while. Maybe they were evaluating how long you can leave a craft with that sort of fuel system parked in orbit w/o things breaking down? Of course, satellites probably already have a similar fuel system, so this seems unlikely.
Personally, I'm still scratching my head over why they need a vehicle that can fly back to earth when it clearly isn't intended to transport humans. I'll just assume that it brought back valuable cargo of some sort.... spy satellite parts? Parts scavenged off of other countries' satellites? Space mushrooms grown in orbit??
Steve K.