The true Story Behind NASA’s Resurrected Space Plane [SpaceShuttle]

Why did NASA quietly move two long-grounded X-34 space planes for inspection? Did they wish to look if they may fly? Were they eyeing a return to space via reusable, airplane-style vehicles? Here’s what they were doing and why.

The aviation and space press buzzed last week with the scoop that NASA had quietly moved its two long-grounded X-34 space planes from open storage at the distance agency’s Dryden center – located on Edwards Air Force Base in California – to a test pilot school within the Mojave Desert. At the desert facility, the mid-’90s-vintage, robotic X-34s can be inspected to establish if they were capable of flying again. It seemed that NASA was eying a dramatic return to the business of fast, cheap space access using a reusable, airplane-style vehicle – something the Air Force has enthusiastically embraced with its mysterious X-37B spacecraft .

The truth, it turns out, is a chunk more complicated, even confusing – but no less exciting. If everything works out, the X-34s will help pioneer not just an emerging method of accessing space, but a new space-exploration business model, in addition.

A Wednesday call to Orbital Sciences, the original manufacturers of the X-34, ended in a short lived conversation with a bemused company official. Barry Berneski, Orbital’s communications director, said he had read the X-34 news, but had heard nothing on the subject from within the firm. ” They would be just trying get it out of Edwards’ valuable real estate,” Berneski said of the 59-foot-long space planes, just one of which ever flew – and just once – before the program was canceled on cost grounds in 2001.

In fact, real estate has been a consider the X-34s’ moves through the years, Dryden official Alan Brown said on Wednesday. After the program’s termination, NASA transferred the gap plane prototypes to the Air Force, ” which thought it may use them but never did,” Brown said. ” When the Air Force needed room inside the hangar, they [the X-34s] were moved to a bombing range and sat accessible deteriorating for several years.” The two bots luckily avoided getting bombed, and earlier this year NASA moved them back to its side of Edwards. ” They were sitting there your time,” Brown mused.

The idea to ship the X-34s to Mojave and inspect them originated with a Dryden-based NASA engineer, Brown said. ” When he revealed this thing still  existed … he decided people should take a look to look if it can be refurbished and made flightworthy.” That’s when the contractors came to retrieve the two neglected spacecraft, pictured above en route to the Mojave.

But that doesn’t mean NASA has formal plans to operate the X-34s under its own auspices, now or ever, Brown stressed. Provided they’re in flyable shape, it’s way more likely the distance agency will make the X-34s available to non-public industry. ” There are various firms keen on this stuff, developing communications and other technologies,” Brown said. ” It might be helpful if they’d a vehicle.”

Brown implied he was seeking to downplay the X-34s’ possible resurrection, but his reference to personal industry hints at a miles more exciting future for the gap planes than could be likely in NASA service. In any case, America’s space future is asking increasingly privatized. In 2004, Scaled Composites boosted its Space Ship One vehicle to raised than 300,000 feet, proving that cheap, reusable, commercial vehicle could reach near-orbit – and potentially score huge profits from spacefaring tourists . And just this week, the Federal Aviation Administration issued the very first license for a commercial spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere from orbit. The license will allow SpaceX to check , in December, an unmanned rocket vehicle designed for resupplying the International Space Station.

President Barack Obama’s space policies entail ” outsourc[ing] major components of the gap program to non-public industry.” With flyable X-34s at the ready, NASA could be in agreement to companies hoping to expand on Scaled’s and SpaceX’s achievements, and extra open up space to explorers … and entrepreneurs. That’s way cooler than just another government-only test program, in case you ask us.

Photo: NASA

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This post is tagged: communications director, edwards air force, edwards air force base, orbital sciences, space exploration, test pilot school