The X37-B

What is probably the worlds most expensive radio-controlled model airplane ever - actually about the size of a Piper Cub, just fatter - is about to make its debut in Florida.

Following along faithfully with the aerospace industries philosophy that "More expensive is better", this so-called "Space Plane" is the latest to come down the pike as a potential replacement for the shuttle.

Not really:

As a reusable space plane, the intent of the craft is to serve as a testbed for dozens of technologies in airframe, propulsion and operation, and other items in the hopes of making space transportation and operations significantly more affordable.

Can you just dig it? They "hope" to make things better.

The intent of the X-37B mission is to try out a wide variety of experiments and technologies, including a highly durable, high-temperature thermal protection system; storable, non-toxic liquid propellants; and important new aerodynamic features - all of which are applicable to future reusable space vehicles.

Storable, non-toxic liquid rocket fuel. Now there's a non-starter. I'll just bet there's some hot-shot and highly expensive research team somewhere trying to make plutonium non-toxic and safe, while the temple monkeys in Washington can still be talked into believing it's possible... with just a bit more funding.

Future reusable space vehicles. You bet. And - of course - any "unmanned vehicle" that just might be capable of delivering nuclear warheads, reusable of course. After all, this is an air force "vehicle", and the air force's real mission is to blow up stuff with very big civilization-ending bombs, not haul freight.

Important new aerodynamic features. Like what? Streamlining? Have the laws of aerodynamics changed on us suddenly? Or are these guys just now learning about them?

It's not really a model airplane. It's a drone. Sort of like the old supersonic firebee drones we used to shoot at back in my White Sands Missile Range days. Airplanes carry people, drones are unmanned.

This thing is a classic sixties design you could find in the comic books of the day. More and more, it looks like our new batch of aerospace engineers can't seem to get their heads - and their design philosophies - out of the sixties and seventies. Making these fragile little toys smaller, more exotic, more expensive and taking much longer to build - is not a substitute for new ideas.

Dang... I was hoping we would have the Aurora by now, and a real space station. But the Aurora is sitting away in some warehouse collecting dust, and the space station couldn't build a wind-up model of a moon buggy if it's life depended on it. Like the Supercollider, the money needed to make those projects live up to their expectations was used to buy votes from residents - legal and illegal - in places like our American ghettos and barrios. So the Aurora's fate became like the Ark's fate in the Indiana Jones movie, and the space station is just a glorified work bench - with some really snazzy test equipment - but incapable lifting a single finger to assist us in our exploration efforts.

The whole original idea behind the space station was to use it as a place to build our interplanetary vehicles, not as a place to see how a candle burned in zero gravity.

At least in the movie, Jones got the girl, but here all we're getting is a high-priced version of a freight car and an orbiting test bench, full of unbelievably expensive equipment, busily testing itself, while astronauts dutifully take notes.

I used to be 100% pro-space research and development. But as I have watched the bureaucrats and second-string engineers turn our whole space effort into an expensive, slow-motion version of incredibly expensive, over-designed and obsolete ideas, I have felt like pulling my hair out, but I have no hair left to pull.

At least we got the Hubble out of all this essentially wasted time and effort, and the now once-upon-a-time ability to repair it.

Beware the Greeks bearing gifts? Small potatoes.

The modern version:

Beware the bureaucrats offering to run things.