Pat Flannery writes:

jeff findley wrote:
If your only metric is innovation. Unfortunately, when you have a
fixed budget (which X-33 essentially had), there is an inverse
relationship between innovation and successfully completing a flight
test program. In other words, the entire program was shut down before
all of the bugs could be worked out in the innovative areas.

The Skunk Works broke one of its own rules on that project- one _and
only one_ new breakthrough technology per project. They tried a linear
plug nozzle motor, lightweight metallic TPS, and composite LH2 tanks all
at once- that was just begging for failure.

Agreed, but NASA didn't care to see it this way. The linear plug
nozzle motor was based on previous research and on a proven
"powerhead", so they didn't see that as being breakthrough. As you
say later Lockheed implied that the composite LH2 tanks weren't
breakthrough, hinting strongly that they had done them before (on a
black program). That left the metallic TPS as the only breakthrough
technology.

NASA fell in love with the three new technologies in the Lockheed bid
and picked a "winner" that turned out to be a hangar queen.

In the end, NASA's official position is that X-33 failed because we do
not yet have the technology to produce a workable SSTO.


Remember the Lockheed CL-400 Suntan though- it also was a complete flop,
but taught a lot of lessons on how _not_ to do things that paid off in
the A-12/SR-71 projects.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure NASA really learned its lesson. They
appear to be completely backing away from reusable technology as
applied to launch vehicles, because they think the technology isn't
there. It's far more likely that X-33 failed due to mismanagement of
the program, which started with picking the wrong "winner".

It would have been beneficial to run the program as three separate
*truely* X-programs. One to test the aerospike, one to test
lightweight structures (e.g. integrated, structural, composite, LH2
tanks), and one to test metallic TPS. Instead of admitting this, NASA
instead blamed the failure on the lack of technology, instead of
blaming it on how their overall technology development program was
being run.

In the end,
this program did more harm than good, especially when NASA refuses to
admit any guilt as it relates to the program's failure.

I think NASA got sold a line of bull by Lockheed Martin, especially when
Lockheed implied that a lot of the technology that they would be using
was based on something classified that they did...and which they
couldn't talk about (wink, wink).
Whatever it was, it apparently didn't use composite LH2 tanks, did it?

If it did, apparently they weren't integrated, structural,
multi-lobed, composite, LH2 tanks. Those tanks were complicated in
*many* different design variables.

Jeff
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