Promise Denied: NASA's X-34 and the Quest for Cheap, Reusable Access to Space

Between 1992 and 1996, the American aerospace community vigorously explored the development of a post-Space Shuttle reusable space transportation system for the United States. This book examines arguably the most elegant and promising of all of the concepts developed, the NASA-Orbital Sciences X-34 Technology Testbed Demonstrator program, one ranking high on any list of the best research aircraft never flown. Indeed, in retrospect, it was a program that deserved greater support rather than precipitous cancellation. The two prototypes-only one of which flew, and then only on "captive carry" flight tests under a modified Lockheed L-1011 TriStar carrier aircraft-deserved far better fates than being reduced to incomplete hulks, left discarded on the eastern shore of Rogers Dry Lake, there to be baked under the harsh Mojave sun, blown about and buffeted by its hot desert winds, and flooded by sporadic desert cloudbursts. To trace how this program went from bright promise to dismal cancellation, it is necessary to begin in the early 1990s. It was a challenging time in American aerospace, as NASA confronted its space launch future (in the wake of the Challenger tragedy but before the Columbia catastrophe); it also was a time when the global patterns of space launch, combined with the rapid drawdown and national economic reinvestment that accompanied the end of the 40-year Cold War, were already eroding what had been America's preeminent position in space access.