On 05 Apr 2004 14:59:15 -0400, jeff findley
wrote:

Mary Shafer writes:
The X-33 RFP called for an _innovative_ vehicle, but the MDAC bid the
DC-Y and RI bid what was essentially a modernized Orbiter. Nothing
new in either of them. At least Lockheed-Martin bid something
innovative, with the aerospike engine on a lifting body. It deserved
to win and the other two didn't.

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.

That's not inevitable, though. "Innovative" is not an excuse for
throwing money down a rat hole.

Have you noticed that we have opposing metaphors here? Throwing good
money after bad versus in for a penny, in for a pound, for example.

When NASA (or any other government agency) wants a specific company or
specific proposal to win the competitive bid process, it writes the
RFP to be sure that happens. It doesn't specify "innovative" for a
warmed-over SDIO concept or an Orbiter retread.

Innovative gets specified when there is more of a desire to play in a
technological sandbox than there is to do real work towards lowering
the costs of access to space.

That's not part of NASA's charter for X-vehicles. X-vehicles are
flown to explore new flight regimes or get new flight data or
demonstrate new technology. The X-29 wasn't built to demonstrate
cheaper access to flight, for example, although a lot of it was COTS,
like the F-16 landing gear and the F-5 cockpits and forebodies.

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. 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 personally don't think we ever will have that technology because I
think the physics are against it. It was an X-vehicle, though, so
failure is an option. I just wish it had come later in the program.

If DC-Y wasn't innovative, I'd like to know if you think DC-X was
innovative.

I thought it was very innovative, from the day I went to the early
team meeting long before the program was formalized. I would have
liked to have worked on it, not just advised at the beginning.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer