perfidy

As China prepares to launch her first chinkonauts, and Europe launches a nifty new lunar probe, the United States is preparing to retro-60s style plan for American manned space flight. NASA is so, like, hip.

ABC is reporting on the push to design an orbital space plane to supplement the space shuttle. NASA is cleverly calling the designs "next generation shuttles" but the fact is, the Air Force had something very similar in mind when it was designing the X-20 Dynasoar back in the fifties.

This image shows the four possible designs:

The vehicle on the upper left is functionally identical to the X-20, a lifting body glider. The one on the lower left is basically a reusable Apollo capsule. All four of these contenders would be launched atop a disposable launch vehicle like the Delta 4 or Atlas 5. The ABC piece quoted John Junkins, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A & M University:

"The Space Shuttle is 25-year-old technology that has not kept up... But it has done everything asked of it — carry people and carry huge amounts of cargo. No other space vehicle can do that. But it is time to separate the responsibilities."

So, to replace a twenty five year old technology, NASA is reaching back fifty years. We very nearly had a Orbital Space Plane in 1964, with a design going back to the late fifties. While I am not averse (certainly!) to NASA developing new space vehicles, trumpeting this as a next generation shuttle reveals the fundamental vacuum at the heart of a once great institution.