NASA moves X-34s out of storage

Maybe the global cost cutting even applies at nasa, that or they are on to something...

The latest Popular Science magazine (Dec 2010) has a small article reporting that NASA is studying a magnetic rail launched scramjet with a space vehicle mounted on it. The X-34s look interestingly similar to the space vehicle. Maybe they will be used to study this process.

Hell, why not recycle? From what I read just in that brief article neither one of them has been flown under their own power so they're practically brand new anyway.

Interesting post - reminds me of NASA and water on the moon - first they "could be" then there was, then there "could have been" then they found it, then there wasn't any water - and then they discovered it... Definately something brewing here...

Why not we need a replace for the Shuttle why not this the X34 it's a lot better than the Orin capsule and it aready built why give a chance and save some money in the bargin.

Well the Air Force put the x-37 b to good use. I wonder what other cancelled project's can be pulled out, updated, and used?

I think this is the wrong way to go. These X-34s are just Shuttle-lite drones. If anything goes wrong there is no one there to fix it, and so 1.7 billion dollars would be lost. The risk with taking people is the chance in loosing those people, while the gain is that they can many times save their craft. I'd rather see the Constellation program re-instated. It seemed well understood technology that was highly effective and efficient.

I think lets go for it. A bird in the hand, so they say.

I think this is the wrong way to go. These X-34s are just Shuttle-lite drones. If anything goes wrong there is no one there to fix it, and so 1.7 billion dollars would be lost. The risk with taking people is the chance in loosing those people, while the gain is that they can many times save their craft. I'd rather see the Constellation program re-instated. It seemed well understood technology that was highly effective and efficient. The Shuttles were constantly being updated as new tech came along. And they have years of accumulated knowledge to update the X- 34's. And to use as cargo haulers ... [More]

First of all, none of these "X" craft being spoken about on this are even capable of cargo-rated flights at this time, let alone human-rated. Also, these are TEST vehicles...ergo, extremely small & have ZERO available internal volume available to modify for cargo/etc. In regards to mentions of Ares/Orion having too many "bugs" - I request you do at least some marginal homework researching the topic before attributing to the propaganda machine by reinforcing the erroneous belief the program was plagued with issues (both technical & financial) to basically a stand-still. In fact, do a li... [More]