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I'm not all doom and gloom about the X-37, I think the purpose for it is to deploy and retrieve satellites for the Air Force. One of the design reference missions for the Space Shuttle was to launch and retrieve DOD satellites. In fact, the design of the Shuttle was altered to meet specific requirements for DOD missions and payloads. The large delta wings of the Shuttle were designed so that it could have the aerodynamic performance needed to be launched into a polar orbit, deploy a payload, and at the same site it was launched from after one orbit of the Earth. Also, the payload bay is the size it is today because it needed to fit the largest planned DOD satellites.
Bottom line, the Air Force and the DOD have been interested in a resusuable launch vehicle to deploy and retrieve payloads for over 30 years. They stopped using the Shuttle for that purpose after the Challenger accident in 1986 (though they had to fly some payloads on the Shuttle post-Challenger due to their size). Since then, they have relied on expendable launch vehicles to launch their payloads but always had their eye on a reusable one that could return payloads back to the Earth.
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