In article ,
says...

"The U.S. military's new XS-1 space plane will be built by Boeing, and it's called
the Phantom Express.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today (May 24) it
had selected Boeing for the next phase of its XS-1 project, known as the
Experimental Spaceplane, after an intense competition among aerospace companies.
The XS-1 is aimed to be a completely reusable military space plane capable of
launching 3,000-lb. (1,360 kilograms) satellites into orbit 10 times in 10 days.
The spacecraft could dramatically reduce the cost of launches to $5 million per
flight, DARPA officials said."

See:

http://www.space.com/36985-darpa-xs-...m-express.html

Big waste of money, IMHO. XS-1 is a VTHL winged launch stage powered by
SSMEs. It looks like a slightly warmed over version of Boeing's failed
bid for NASA's X-33 contract.

To be fair, I'd expect they're bidding what they know. Rockwell
International, the company who built the space shuttle orbiters, was
bought by Boeing many years ago. So, it doesn't surprise me that their
vehicle looks the way it does.

But expecting this to launch 10 times in 10 days and be cheap to operate
is a stretch, especially with the SSMEs powering the thing. The SSMEs
are being assembled from components that Aerojet Rocketdyne isn't using
for SLS, so that is a bit sketchy. My guess is they're not going to be
up to the latest "block" version of the SSME.

Jeff
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