Posted by Ray Katz in NASA, current, history
Shuttle’s (planned but cancelled) successor heading to museum
The X-38 prototype will next land in Omaha, Nebraska.
The X-38 was a spacecraft designed to bring crews to the International Space Station. It was an alternative to the Russian Soyuz and a successor to the Shuttle.
It was canceled in 2002.
Now the latest “shuttle successor” is in danger of cancellation…and the X-38 is headed to a museum.
That’s right. A nearly “flight-ready” prototype of a brilliant space vehicle is going to the Strategic Air & Space Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. According to a blogger—who was once on a review team for the X-38—the program was killed in 2002 for political reasons. The vehicle itself was innovative and brilliant…and possibly just what NASA needed at that time. (Maybe NASA still needs it…but it’s too late.)
The prototype was built by Scaled Composites, the company that later built SpaceShipOne, which won the X-Prize—the first successful private manned spacecraft.
I love museums, especially those with exhibits about space. But I’d have preferred to have seen the X-38 fly.
