NASA Disposes of Space Lemon

NASA Disposes of Space Lemon

NewsMax.com
Friday, March 2, 2001

The experimental top-of-the-line spacecraft never left the drawing board, much less the launchpad – four years and $1.25 billion down the drain.

An embarrassed National Aeronautics and Space Administration finally gave up on the controversial X-33, which was supposed to have been the shuttle of the future: reliable, reusable and capable of lifting heavier payloads at less cost per ton.

Its demise could not have come at a worse – or better – time, just as the new Republican Bush-Cheney administration is looking for ways to cut costs and increase productivity in the nation's defense-related hardware.

According to the Associated Press:

The high-ticket shuttle, under development by Lockheed-Martin Corporation, was canceled by NASA on Thursday after it had sunk $1.25 billion and four years of research and development into the project.

"It's not surprising that this happened," said Charles Lurio, an aerospace consultant in Brookline, Mass. "The vehicle was essentially programmed for failure."

He and other critics had contended all along that the X-33 design was too ambitious by far to succeed, and in the last analysis NASA came to agree.

Advertised as able to shrink the shuttle's $10,000-a-pound launch costs to $1,000-a-pound or less by 2006 or 2007, it relied on too many untested technologies, opponents argued, when a more practical, less glamorous design could have done the job.

In what had to have been a painful chore, NASA issued a statement that the technology behind the X-33's lightweight composite hydrogen fuel tanks was not mature enough.

"Our technology has not yet developed to the point that we can successfully develop a new reusable launch vehicle that substantially improves safety, reliability and affordability,'' said Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center near Houston, Texas.

The X-33 never made it as far as a test flight.

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