Free Republic

As any battlefield commander will tell you, getting troops to the fight can be as difficult as winning it. And for modern-day soldiers, the sites of conflict are so far-flung, and the political considerations of even flying over another country so complicated, that rapid entry has become nearly impossible. If a group of Marine Corps visionaries have their way, however, 30 years from now, Marines could touch down anywhere on the globe in less than two hours, without needing to negotiate passage through foreign airspace. The breathtaking efficiency of such a delivery system could change forever the way the U.S....

Yet another experimental spaceplane may soon fly the skies over the Mojave, California inland spaceport. The work pace appears to be accelerating in readying the unpiloted X-37 vehicle for a drop test high above the desert. Taking the craft to altitude for release will be the White Knight mothership, designed and operated by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California. It was the White Knight that toted SpaceShipOne skyward for release, with that piloted rocketplane making repeated suborbital flights in 2004—bagging the $10 million Ansari X Prize in the process. The White Knight/X-37 combination has undergone numbers of taxi and flight hops...

Russia and Europe are in talks to build a new a space plane that will fly missions to the International Space Station once Shuttle's final flight is over in 2010. The new plane would have a lot of new ideas in its design, explains RKK Energuya engineer Vladimir Daneev. "Since the construction of the Shuttle and Buran, a lot of new materials have been found and new technologies have appeared," he said. "We will use all this Russian know-how in the new spacecraft, and we are eager to incorporate a maximum of European technology in the design."

Nasa flew an unmanned experimental jet on Tuesday to a speed that was in excess of nine times the speed of sound - a world record. The X-43A - a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) - was released on its test run from beneath a bomber's wing. The 3.7m-long aircraft had already set a world best for an "air breathing" jet of Mach 6.83 - nearly seven times the speed of sound - on a flight in March. Preliminary data confirming the success came through in real-time. Mach 10 is roughly 12,000km/h or 7,400mph. "This flight is a key milestone and...

<p>Two leading members of the House Science Committee are urging NASA to defer its developing space plane program because of concerns about cost and the potential benefit of the craft.</p> <p>NASA hopes to have the so-called Orbital Space Plane launched to the international space station by 2008, to serve at least initially as a lifeboat.</p>

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Space Systems Co. will team with Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems Sector to compete for full-scale development of NASA's orbital space plane. The orbital space plane program is planned as a next-generation crew rescue and transport system for the international space station. The space plane, which may include multiple vehicles, will enable a larger permanent crew to occupy the orbiting research facility, increasing science and research capabilities in space. Details of the agreement between Lockheed and Northrop, announced Monday, will be worked out in the next 90 days, Northrop Grumman spokesman Brooks McKinney said. If any of the...

Secret American Space Planes to Dominate Planet EarthThe USA has been working on secret, new-generation space planes In the beginning of the 1990s, Russian intelligence uncovered the fact that the USA was testing a super-secret plane at one of its airbases. Russian agents attempted to see the new object with their own eyes and take pictures of it, but all attempts failed. The Americans provided incredible security for their secret weapon, and they tested the plane only at night. However, Russian agents managed to get some information about the new plane, which the USA calls Aurora, in honor of the...

An approach and landing test version of the X-37, a spacecraft designed to demonstrate technologies for NASA's Orbital Space Plane Program, successfully completed structural testing in Huntington Beach, Calif. The series of ground-based, proof tests are intended to verify the structural integrity of the X-37 Approach and Landing Test Vehicle. The tests apply pressure to the vehicle, simulating flight stresses and loads the X-37 may encounter in flight.

DAYTON, Ohio -- NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe has instructed the agency to accelerate development of the Orbital Space Plane and to have a vehicle ready to send to the international space station by 2008 to serve as a crew rescue vehicle. "In light of Columbia, the administrator has asked us to accelerate by two years," said Daniel Dumbacher, manager of the second generation reusable launch vehicle program office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. He said O’Keefe requested the new schedule about two weeks ago.

The US manned space program has at best only a few more years of missions left in it, until its cost, complexity and design flaws results in another failure that grounds all US manned launches until a new transport system is designed and built. by Jeffrey F. BellHonolulu - Jul 10, 2003 Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the ungrammatical moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station...

<p>NASA announced a handful of new details Tuesday about the proposed orbital space plane, which is supposed to provide a safer, more flexible option for sending humans into space within the next decade.</p> <p>The baseline requirements for the spacecraft call for a vehicle that can be an emergency escape pod for the international space station by 2010 and a simple way to get people back and forth to space two years later.</p>

Shuttle Catastrophe to Stir Political; Policy Decision Making By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:35 pm ET 01 February 2003 The tragic loss of Columbia and its crew will bring about a series of tough decisions by NASA, the White House, and the American public. Both the future direction of human space travel and overall operation of the International Space Station must be addressed in short order. Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 moonwalker and former Senator from New Mexico, said that getting a shuttle back into space is critical. "You can no longer stand-down indefinitely. There is commitment to the...

In light of today's Columbia disaster, it is perhaps time to revisit the intentions behind the now-cancelled National Aerospace Plane (the X-30) program. That program, in many ways, addressed what are apparently many of the problems that led to this explosion and loss of life. In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration, through DARPA (the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) formed a team of services (the Air Force, Navy, Strategic Defense) and NASA to design and build a scramjet-powered spaceplane that had aicraft-like operational characteristics. The goal was to make a space plane that was genuinely reusable, unlike the shuttles,...