For Years America Had a Secret Spaceplane That Could Stay in Orbit for Years. Now China Has One Too

For Years America Had a Secret Spaceplane That Could Stay in Orbit for Years. Now China Has One Too

For years, the United States enjoyed a near-monopoly on reusable military spacecraft. Boeing’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle quietly orbited the Earth for months, sometimes even years, while conducting classified experiments. X-37B. Image Credit: Creative Commons. Foreign intelligence agencies aware of these historic missions by the X-37B could only guess as to what the Americans were doing.  That era, like so much of America’s hegemony today, is o…