White Knight Testing X-37

mknewman writes "The innovative carrier plane used to air-launch SpaceShipOne has a new mission. At its inland spaceport in Mojave, Calif., the White Knight mothership has been involved in fit and high-speed taxi checks with a new passenger: the X-37, an unpiloted, reusable space plane. "

Comments

Real-life crash

[Latent Heat]

As explained in Milton Thompson's "Flight Without Wings", the Steve Austin crash was an actual crash at Edwards of one of the lifting bodies. But in real life, the pilot actually walked away from that one -- apparently they needed extra weight in the nose to balance the craft for flight, so they used that weight to beef up the safety cage for the pilot.

Re:Why? Answer: Cost

[uberdave]

I guess the answer is cost.

"NASA has transferred its X-37 technology demonstration program to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which plans to go ahead with atmospheric drop tests of the prototype space plane next year."

The B-52 aircraft that NASA normally uses for such drop tests would not be used, a decision made by the agency now in charge of the X-37 program, he said. "The cost analysis favored Scaled Composites," [NASA spokesman Michael] Braukus said.

Re:How does this relate to the America's Space Pri

[jnhtx]

Rutan has done a lot of DoD work for years. He started by making composite models of various low observable aircraft for radar cross-section testing, hence the name "Scaled Composites".

He has made an ultra-low cost ground attack fighter and an experimental flying scale model of a tactical transport airplane.

White Knights sister ship, Proteous, has been dropping various smart bombs as a "UAV Surrogate" for DoD testing for the last year.