X-33 by Lockheed Martin on Launch Pad - Computer Graphic

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES

09.23.2009

Courtesy Photo

NASA

This is an artist's conception of the X-33 technology demonstrator on its launch pad, ready for lift-off into orbit. NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, expected to play a key role in the development and flight testing of the X-33, which was a technology demonstrator vehicle for a possible Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV). The RLV technology program was a cooperative agreement between NASA and industry. The goal of the RLV technology program was to enable significant reductions in the cost of access to space, and to promote the creation and delivery of new space services and other activities that would improve U.S. economic competitiveness. The X-33 was a wedged-shaped subscale technology demonstrator prototype of a potential future Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) that Lockheed Martin had dubbed VentureStar. The company hoped to develop VentureStar early this century. Through demonstration flight and ground research, NASA's X-33 program was to have provided the information needed for industry representatives such as Lockheed Martin to decide whether to proceed with the development of a full-scale, commercial RLV program. A full-scale, single-stage-to-orbit RLV was to have dramatically increase reliability and lowered costs of putting a pound of payload into space, from the current figure of $10,000 to $1,000. Reducing the cost associated with transporting payloads in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by using a commercial RLV was to have created new opportunities for space access and significantly improved U.S. economic competitiveness in the world-wide launch marketplace. NASA expected to be a customer, not the operator, of the commercial RLV. The X-33 design was based on a lifting body shape with two revolutionary "linear aerospike" rocket engines and a rugged metallic thermal protection system. The vehicle also had lightweight components and fuel tanks built to conform to the vehicle's outer shape. Time between X-33 flights was normally to have been seven days, but the program hoped to demonstrate a two-day turnaround between flights during the flight-test phase of the program. The X-33 was an unpiloted vehicle that took off vertically like a rocket and landed horizontally like an airplane. It was to have reached altitudes of up to 50 miles and high hypersonic speeds. The X-33 program was managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center and was to have been launched at a special launch site on Edwards Air Force Base. Due to technical problems with the liquid hydrogen fuel tank, and the resulting delays and increased costs, the X-33 program was cancelled in February 2001.

NASA Identifier: NIX-EC96-43631-1

• Date Taken: 09.23.2009
• Date Posted: 10.17.2012 22:24
• Photo ID: 736650
• Resolution: 1536x1321
• Size: 263.43 KB
• Location: WASHINGTON, DC, US