Lockheed Martin X-33 - Design and Development

Design and Development

Through the use of the lifting body shape, composite liquid fuel tanks, and the aerospike engine, NASA and Lockheed Martin hoped to test fly a craft that would demonstrate the viability of a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) design. An SSTO craft would not require external fuel tanks or boosters to reach low-earth orbit. Doing away with the need for "staging" with launch vehicles, such as with the Shuttle and the Apollo rockets, would lead to an inherently more reliable and safer space launch vehicle. While the X-33 would not approach airplane-like safety, the X-33 would attempt to demonstrate that 0.997 reliability, or 3 mishaps out of 1,000 launches, which would be an order of magnitude more reliable than the Space Shuttle system. The 15 planned experimental X-33 flights could only begin this statistical evaluation.

The unmanned craft would have been launched vertically from a specially designed facility constructed on Edwards Air Force Base, and landed horizontally (VTHL) on a runway at the end of its mission. Initial sub-orbital test flights were planned from Edwards AFB to Dugway Proving Grounds southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Once those test flights were completed, further flight tests were to be conducted from Edwards AFB to Malmstrom AFB in Great Falls, Montana, to gather more complete data on aircraft heating and engine performance at higher speeds and altitudes.

On July 2, 1996, NASA selected Lockheed Martin Skunk Works of Palmdale, California, to design, build, and test the X-33 experimental vehicle for the RLV program. Lockheed Martin's design concept for the X-33 was selected over competing designs from Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Boeing featured a Space Shuttle-derived design, and McDonnell Douglas featured a design based on its vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL) DC-XA test vehicle.

The X-33 was never intended to fly higher than an altitude of 100 km, nor faster than one-half of orbital velocity. Had any successful tests occurred, extrapolation would have been necessary to apply the results to a proposed orbital vehicle.