Aug. 12, 2008 -- Just as NASA is going out of the reusable spaceship business, the military is sticking its toe in the proverbial waters with a hand-me-down program salvaged from the cutting room floor.
The U.S. Air Force is a bit vague on details, but the gist of the plan is this: Sometime in December, an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket is to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying a prototype spaceship called the X-37B into orbit.
The experimental craft (that's what the X stands for) is to spend an undetermined number of days in space, circling the planet, before landing autonomously at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
An Evolving Mission
Exactly what the military would do with a space plane is unknown, but possible missions include carrying satellites to and from space, as well as repairing and servicing satellites in orbit.
"We wanted to develop a risk-reduction vehicle for space experimentation and to explore concepts of operation for a long-duration reusable space vehicle," the Air Force wrote in an email in response to questions from Discovery News.
Repeated requests to interview the program manager were declined.
X-37 was a NASA program until 2004, when President George W. Bush redirected the civilian space flight program from microgravity research in low-Earth orbit, which has been the focus of the space shuttle and International Space Station programs, to outer space exploration.
Space Plane Without a Home
NASA was told to finish station construction and retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, and to develop new capsule-style spaceships that could ferry astronauts to the station and the moon. Programs that did not directly support the new initiative were chopped.
"The bottom line is that X-37 did not meet the needs any longer, from a headquarters perspective, for the exploration mission," Dan Dumbacher, the former program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told Discovery News.
The military's research agency, DARPA, was interested in the project and took it over from NASA for additional work. It was then transferred to the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which built and assessed a test vehicle.
During the December orbital test flight, sensors will collect information about the vehicle's performance and relay the data to flight controllers and engineers on the ground.
"If we achieve orbit and successfully de-orbit and land, we would consider that to be a mission success," the Air Force wrote by email.
The test craft is about one-quarter the size of the space shuttle and is not equipped to carry passengers.
"The X-37B was never intended to be a manned vehicle. A complete program redesign would be required to achieve a man-rated vehicle," the Air Force wrote.
What Lies Ahead
The ship's first flight likely will not be its last.
"The number of vehicles that will be built is unknown at this time and is dependent on the results of the first mission," the Air Force wrote. "The program has positioned itself to rapidly reconstitute or expand...in an effort to make space more routine, affordable and responsive."
The Air Force refused to release funding details, except to say that the program is heavily leveraged off investments made by NASA, DARPA and other entities.
NASA hired Boeing's Phantom Works in 1999 to build the original X-37A spaceship, which was intended to be carried into orbit by a space shuttle and released for an automated landing.
In 2006, the X-37A was dropped from beneath the wing of a jet carrier aircraft for a first atmospheric test flight. Doing the honors of hoisting the prototype space plane was Scaled Composites' White Knight, the high-altitude jet that served as a launching platform for the privately funded suborbital vehicle, SpaceShipOne.
The flight was considered successful, but after touching down at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, the vehicle ran off the runway and damaged its landing gear. After two more test flights, the Air Force decided to move ahead with a follow-up ship, the X-37B, now preparing for its December debut.
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