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"'La force motrice' of Reusable Launcher Development: The Rise and Fall of the SDIO's SSTO Program, From the X-Rocket to the Delta Clipper" Introduction. NASA commissioned me to document the development of the X-33 in March of 1997. The X-33 is an advanced technology demonstrator vehicle intended to flight test technologies deemed critical for eventually building a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket transport. Those technologies include a metallic thermal protection system, an aerospike engine, and composite cryogenic hydrogen tanks. As part of the history project, I chose to write about the SDIO's SSTO Program as a predecessor to the X-33, even though...

Over the next four years an X-vehicle airframe design for a future reusable launcher will be ground tested under the US Air Force Research Laboratory's $70 million Fully Reusable Access to Space Technology (FAST) programme. The airframe testing is to be supplemented by work on vehicle subsystems and also propulsion options analyses, which could see future use of Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) new Merlin engine. Ground-based experiments will include high-temperature ascent and re-entry testing with realistic aerodynamic loads. The goal of FAST is to develop technologies for aircraft-like space access operations and to spin those out to the private sector...

One assumption which everyone in the space community has been making is that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which NASA plans to use for future human spaceflight will be placed into low Earth orbit by a heavy-lift version of either the Atlas 5 or the Delta 4 EELVs. This, in turn, implies the end of NASA’s efforts to develop and build a reusable launch vehicle (RLV). One sign of this is the stream consistently negative comments on the RLV concept from Administrator Sean O’Keefe. This may be a case of sour grapes, since NASA has so often failed to come...

“We know from history that every medium—air, land and sea—has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means to both deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space.” —Rumsfeld Commission Report, January 2001 In the 1980s, the opponents of “Star Wars” often claimed that “the effective protection of a nation against nuclear attack had never been a serious prospect (and in the view of most scientists, is not today).” The naysayers’ argument was more with Isaac Newton and with Earth’s gravity field than it was...

[Note: an edited version of this article appeared in the August 15 issue of SpaceEquity.com.] The history of development of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) is littered with carcasses like some foreboding desert trail. In the last two decades we have seen NASP, Delta Clipper, X-33, X-34, VentureStar, Roton, and others come and go, leaving behind, at best, bits and pieces of hardware. The only successful RLV ever developed has been the Space Shuttle, and even there the word “successful” must be qualified. Thirty years after the Shuttle started, we have only now, in the wake of the Columbia accident, come...

When Burt Rutan rolled out the SpaceShipOne suborbital spacecraft earlier this month (see “Rutan aims for space: A look at SpaceShipOne”, April 21, 2003), one of the biggest surprises had nothing to do with the vehicle’s unique design or flight profile. Instead, despite the fact that the vehicle seemed ideal to win the X Prize and usher in the era of suborbital space tourism, Rutan made it clear there were no plans to put the vehicle into commercial service. SpaceShipOne would fly under an “experimental research and development glider” license on a series of flights to determine what the operating...

No Pilots in Future Space Shuttles Wed May 1, 6:23 PM ET By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The replacement for NASA (news - web sites)'s aging space shuttles may take off like a plane, be propelled by booster rockets that fly back to Earth and, in one of the more radical moves, eliminate pilots. The reusable space plane, equipped with crew escape and automatic landing systems, would be far safer than the shuttle, officials said Tuesday in unveiling 15 design concepts. It also would be much cheaper to operate, they promised. The goal is...