NASA X-38 - Development

Development

X-38 was the program under leadership of NASA Johnson Space Center to build a series of incremental flight demonstrators for the proposed Crew Return Vehicle. In an unusual move for an X-plane, the program involved the European Space Agency and the German Space Agency DLR. It was originally called X-35. The program manager was John Muratore, while the Flight Test Engineer was future NASA astronaut Michael E. Fossum.

The X-38 design used a wingless lifting body concept originally developed by the U.S. Air Force in the mid-1960s during the X-24 program, and it was Muratore's brainchild.

The X-38 program used unmanned mockups to test the CRV design. The flight models were:

  • X-38 V-131
  • X-38 V-132
  • X-38 V-131R, which was the V-131 prototype reworked with a modified shell
  • X-38 V-201, which was an orbital prototype to be launched by the Space Shuttle
  • X-38 V-133 and V-202 were also foreseen at some point in the project but were never built.

The X-38 V-131 and V-132 shared the aerodynamic shape of the X-24A. This shape had to be enlarged for the Crew Return Vehicle needs (crew of seven astronauts) and redesigned, especially in the rear part, which became thicker.

The X-38 V-131R was designed at 80 percent of the size of a CRV, and featured the final redesigned shape (Two later versions, V-133 and V-201, were planned at 100 percent of the CRV size). The 80% scale versions were flown at 15,000 to 24,000 pound weight. The X-38 V-201 orbital prototype was 80 percent complete, but never flown.

In tests the V-131, V-132 and V-131R were dropped by a B-52 from altitudes of up to 45,000 ft (13,700 m), gliding at near transonic speeds before deploying a drogue parachute to slow them to 60 miles per hour (97 km/h). The later prototypes had their descent continue under a 7,500-square-foot (700 m2) parafoil wing, the largest ever made. Flight control was mostly autonomous, backed up by a ground-based pilot.

The X-38 project cancellation was announced on April 29, 2002 due to budget concerns.

The X-38 V-132 is now on permanent loan from NASA to the Strategic Air and Space Museum at Ashland Nebraska.

As of November 2009, the 80% complete X-38 V-201, having been moved out of "Hangar X" at Johnson Space Center- is now sitting under a blue plastic tarp outside the Media Resource Center (Building 423) at Johnson Space Center, Houston

As of November 2010, the X-38 V-131R is on loan from NASA to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Read more about this topic:  NASA X-38

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
    John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902)

    Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)

    The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)