Single Stage to Orbit: Politics, Space Technology, and the Quest for Reusable Rocketry

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book would not have come into existence if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had not embarked on the ill-fated X-33 project and had not contracted to have the project’s development documented from beginning to end. The X-33 program’s stated goal was to reduce the business and technical risks by the year 2000 so that private industry could build and operate a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle for civilian, military , and commercial customers. The payoff for NASA would be a dramatic reduction in the cost of putting payloads in space. NASA selected the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to build the X-33 following a competition among three industry designs that included Rockwell International and McDonnell Douglas. The Skunk Works concept used a lifting body shape coupled with aerospike rocket engines. The X-33 prototype would simulate the ascent and reentry environments of the full-scale launcher, flying over thirteen times the speed of sound (Mach 13) at altitudes approaching 50 miles. It would have made as many as fifteen flights from the Haystack Butte launch site, located near Edwards Air Force Base, California, to landing sites in Utah and Montana, beginning in June 1999. However, the Skunk Works postponed those flights several times and never completed construction of the vehicle . By March 2001, neither NASA nor Lockheed Martin wanted to spend more money on the project, or on detailing its history, and Lockheed Martin began dismantling the craft in January 2002. In March 1997, NASA hired me to document the X-33 program. Among the many deliverables that the contract required was a monograph “on aspects of the development of the system (short booklet of less than 100 pages)” and a book-length “formal history of the project.” The monograph was due early in the contract, while the completed book manuscript constituted the final deliverable. My initial thought was to focus the monograph on the propulsion system, that is, the aerospike engines. The exercise would have been helpful in preparing a small portion of the X-33 history. However, the more I researched the X-33 and single -stage-to-orbit rockets, the more I recognized that another project had been a decisive forerunner of the X-33: the Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) built by McDonnell Douglas for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. The DC-X story would constitute a large section of the X-33 book-length history . I realized that if the DC-X, rather than the aerospike engine, were the monograph’s subject, I would lay much more groundwork for the future X-33 history book. After receiving approval for the monograph outline that chronicled the DC-X’s development from concept to flight tests at White Sands, New Mexico , I wrote a manuscript titled “From the X-Rocket to the Delta Clipper: The Making and Unmaking of a Spaceship.” With encouragement from Roger Launius, Chief Historian, and Gary Payton, Deputy Associate Administrator for Space, both at NASA Headquarters, I expanded the monograph into a book-length manuscript. Meanwhile, the failure of the X-33 program was becoming increasingly apparent. When NASA terminated the X-33 program and the history project, the manuscript history of the DC-X, rather than that of the X-33, became the contract’s final deliverable. This book, then, researched and written entirely under contract with NASA Headquarters, would not have come into existence without NASA’s desire to document the X-33 program’s development. I owe much gratitude and appreciation to Roger Launius and Gary Payton, who oversaw the contract. They provided secretarial, telephone, photocopying, and other supplies and services , as well as a professional environment in which to write. The professional and congenial support of Roger and the History Office staff was extremely helpful. A special word of recognition also goes to Gary Payton. A believer in single-stage-to-orbit transport and in the importance of the X-33 program, he convinced NASA to fund the history project in the first place. He was most encouraging , even when the going got rough, and provided many insights in our informal talks. It was a pleasure to work with both Roger and Gary. This book owes much to those who donated boxes and boxes of documents over the course of the X-33 history project. Together they formed the bulk of the collection of primary documents that became the X-33 archive which served as the documentary...