The aviation and space press buzzed last week with the news that NASA had quietly moved its two long-grounded X-34 space planes from
open storage at the space agency's Dryden center -- located on
Edwards Air Force Base in California -- to a test pilot school in
the Mojave Desert. At the desert facility, the mid-'90s-vintage,
robotic X-34s would be inspected to determine 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 bit more complicated, even
confusing -- but no less exciting. If everything works out, the
X-34s might help pioneer not just an emerging method of accessing
space, but a new space-exploration business model, as well.
A Wednesday call to Orbital Sciences, the original manufacturers
of the X-34, resulted in a brief 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 inside the firm. "They might be just trying get it
out of Edwards' valuable real estate," Berneski said of the
59-foot-long space planes, only one of which ever flew -- and just
once -- before the programme was cancelled on cost grounds in
In fact, real estate has been a factor in the X-34s'
moves over the years, Dryden official Alan Brown said on Wednesday.
After the programme's termination, Nasa transferred the space plane prototypes to the Air Force,
"which thought it might use them but never did," Brown said. "When
the Air Force needed room in the hangar, they [the X-34s] were
moved to a bombing range and sat out there 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 a while," 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 found out this thing
still existed … he decided people should take a look to see if
it could 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 far more likely the space agency
will make the X-34s available to private industry. "There are a
number of firms interested in these things, developing
communications and other technologies," Brown said. "It would be
helpful if they had a vehicle."
Brown implied he was trying to downplay the X-34s' possible
resurrection, but his reference to private industry hints at a far
more exciting future for the space planes than would be likely in
Nasa service. After all, America's space future is looking
increasingly privatised. In 2004, Scaled Composites boosted its
Space Ship One vehicle to higher 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 test, 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 space program to private
industry." With flyable X-34s at the ready, Nasa could lend a hand
to companies hoping to expand on Scaled's and SpaceX's
achievements, and further open up space to explorers … and
entrepreneurs. That's way cooler than just another
government-only test programme, if you ask us.