Wednesday August 25 2:36 AM ET
Reusable Spacecraft in the Works
By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Flight tests will begin next year on a new generation of reusable spacecraft that will be less expensive to operate than
current rocket launchers, officials say.
Officials of NASA and its aerospace industry partners said Tuesday that three types of experimental craft were poised to begin flight testing
starting in the summer of 2000.
The X-33 craft, being built by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, Calif., will undergo suborbital flights next summer. Another craft,
called the X-34 and being built by Orbital Sciences Corp. (NYSE:ORB - news) of Dulles, Va., will undergo engine and structural tests in 2000,
leading up to a series of flights.
A third craft, called the X-37, is in an earlier development stage by the Boeing Co., but is scheduled for two test flights from the space shuttle
starting in 2002.
Gary Payton, deputy associate administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the goal of the technology
development program was to ``bring down the cost of space access by a factor of 10.'
Putting a pound into orbit using current rockets or the space shuttle costs $5,000 to $20,000 a pound, he said, and there is no way to improve
those costs with the present U.S. launch systems. Most current rockets are expendable - used one time and thrown away - and take weeks to
prepare for launch.
The new generation of space launchers could reduce the cost of space access to about $1,000 a pound, officials said.
Payton said the program also would develop spacecraft that could be launched more often and by fewer people. It now takes hundreds of
engineers who spend weeks in preparation to launch a single payload.
With the new generation of spacecraft, he said, ``five flights in 21 days will be routine.'
Lockheed's X-33 is designed to be launched as a single stage to orbit, in contrast to current systems that use several rockets to reach space. It
is a 69-foot-long, wedge-shaped craft that is launched vertically and then lands like an airplane after a gliding descent from orbit.
Cleon Lacefield said a goal of the X-33 program was to build a spacecraft that could be launched every seven days by as few as 50 people from
simple spaceports that could be located virtually anywhere.
The X-33 will start a series of 15 test flights next summer. The first will be a suborbital flight from Edwards Air Force Base in California to the
Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The craft is expected to reach an altitude of 31 miles and accelerate to 11 times the speed of sound.
The X-34 is designed as the ``workhorse' test vehicle for the program, said Bob Lindberg of Orbital Sciences. Orbital is building three models of
the X-34, with each one being used for different phases of testing new technologies and materials that could be used in later spacecraft. It will
make 27 flight tests.
Lindberg said the X-34 is a robot rocket that will be launched at high altitude from a converted airliner. Some tests will involve unpowered drops
to a landing, but later the X-34 will rocket up to 250,000 feet at eight times the speed of sound before returning to Earth.
The X-37, being built by Boeing, will be carried into orbit by the space shuttle, fly to higher orbits and then land like an airplane. More than
three dozen technologies will be tested in two flights by the craft starting in 2002.
Part of the cost of the development programs is being paid by private industry. For the X-33, NASA has invested $941 million and industry has
contributed $287 million. Boeing and NASA are splitting the $173 million cost of the X-37. Orbital is building and testing the X-34 under a $85.7
million NASA contract.
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