X-37 Flies but Runs Off Runway

mknewman writes "The X-37 drop test was completed today with a lift by White Knight. It had a successful flight but it ran off the end of the runway."

Comments

well...

[Proof_of_death]

It took off, it didn't explode ... two out of three aint bad, right?

X-37 is a DARPA-sponsored project

[gihan_ripper]

I hadn't heard about this new project till I read the article. It's neat that Spaceship One's "White Knight" is being used to haul a DARPA-sponsored project into the Ether! This truly heralds a new age of independent aeronautics.

Re:X-37 is a DARPA-sponsored project

[Waffle Iron]

This truly heralds a new age of independent aeronautics.

Independent how? Scaled Composites has already done enough Pentagon projects to fully qualify as a member of the Military Industrial Complex.

Other than market share, are they really different from Boeing in any significant way? Both companies make civilian aircraft and rockets, and both do defense contracting.

But apparently...

[TechnoGuyRob]

The author was insuccessful in spelling "successful."

Re:But apparently...

[tktk]

That's unpossible.

Re:But apparently...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The author was insuccessful in spelling "successful."

Thanks for Choo-Choo-Choosing to post that, Ralph.

Engineering problem

[angrychimp]

Obviously the runway wasn't long enough.

Re:Engineering problem

[Monkeys!!!]

Obviously the runway wasn't long enough.

Incorrect. The real Engineering problem was that the plane was too long.

Re:Successful?

[zpeterz63]

*sigh* You poor, poor, uneducated man. Don't you know that all you have to do to fly is to throw yourself at the ground and miss?

Re:Why exactly is this Slashdot-worthy?

[MustardMan]

I don't mean to be facetious, or a troll

So what did you mean to be? A dumbass who can't read?

Overheard comment by landing gear engineer

[dunng808]

"Brakes? We don't need no stinkin' brakes!"

any landing

[VolciMaster]

you can walk away from is a good landing

yes, but let's ask about things that matter

[Quadraginta]

Both companies make civilian aircraft and rockets, and both do defense contracting.

Sure, and both have vowels in their corporate name, and both are run by men who wear pants to work and not togas. But on what many see as the key point of whether a company is willing to try radically new and different ways of getting into space, ways independent of the heavy hand of NASA bureaucratic design requirements -- and this is the "independent" I suspect the OP meant -- they're as different as chalk and cheese.

Boeing, like all aerospace majors, has tended to be very cautious about space vehicle design, perhaps in part simply because the cost-plus nature of major NASA and DoD contracts has meant there's less incentive to innovate. Why try some weird new design that may fail if the same old boring design, just multiplied by sixty, will work fine? So what if costs $bazillions? Your profit margin is guaranteed no matter how bloated the budget gets. And that does not even get into micromanagement by Congress, changing the mission requirements every 9 months at random, and institutional conservatism in NASA/DoD.

What many people hope is that a small company that is independent of this process, in the sense that they don't have any long history with the Feds, or gigantic conventional-warfare contracts to preserve, can be more innovative, and break the apparent barrier to lowering access to space costs that seems to have solidified in the past 20 years. It seems to these people incredible that it costs no less (or at least not much less) to put x pounds in orbit in 2006 than it did in 1969. They suggest it arises from fossilization in the big aerospace industry, fused with too-close a relationship to NASA/DoD, who are themselves paralyzed by the fickleness of Congress' support and the lack of any clear vision from the President.

Whether this is a true diagnosis of the situation remains to be seen, and people like Scaled, SpaceX, X-Cor, Virgin Galactic, et cetera will prove it one way or the other fairly soon.

Re:yes, but let's ask about things that matter

[ax_johnson]

Boeing, like all aerospace majors, has tended to be very cautious about space vehicle design, perhaps in part simply because the cost-plus nature of major NASA and DoD contracts has meant there's less incentive to innovate. Why try some weird new design that may fail if the same old boring design, just multiplied by sixty, will work fine? So what if costs $bazillions? Your profit margin is guaranteed no matter how bloated the budget gets.

Actually, when I worked for the DoD, "cost-plus" contracts (short for "cost plus fixed fee") were a means of providing an incentive to come in on or under budget. The contract price was negotiated and agreed upon, and the "fixed fee" was determined as a percentage of the negotiated cost. If the project ran over budget, the governmnet still paid the "cost", but the "fixed fee" didn't change. Thus, the profit margin decreased. If the project came in under budget, the government again only paid the (lower) "cost", and the "fixed fee" represented a higher profit margin.

At least that was how we used those contracts at the time. For some new weird design, the "cost-plus" structure would have some advantages for the government, because it puts some of the risk on the contractor.

The contractor would probably want to use the "time-and-materials" mechanism where, indeed, the "profit margin is guaranteed no matter how bloated the budget gets". Then all the risk is on the government. (Perhaps this is the contract structure these projects usually use?)

This is not to say that there isn't lots of fraud/waste/abuse in these kinds of government activities, just that it was present in many more subtle (and institutionalized) ways than just the contract mechanism or the relationship between the project mangers and the contractors.

And that does not even get into micromanagement by Congress, changing the mission requirements every 9 months at random...

In my experience, this is closer to the primary problem. The lack of long-term vision and leadership is the biggest killer of budgets and innovation. At the Congressional and Administration level, vision - by definition - does not extend beyond the next election.

As important is the following: For upper and middle managers in civil service, continuously increasing your annual budget is the priority. The way you grow an organization (and by extension, your pay scale and prestige) is by increasing your budget. Decreasing your budget through effeciency or innovation shrinks the organization, your pay scale, and your prestige. (Actually, it makes your job go away, because you pay scale can't be decreased.)

In my organization, not using all of your budget for the year in the first 3 quarters was really bad. It resulted in your remaining budget getting pulled by headquarters and sent somewhere else (where they could spend it immediately), and your budget request for the next year being cut by a corresponding (or greater) amount. It also reflected badly in preformance reviews. Consequently the incentive was this: spend as much money as fast as you can. (That was not how the management put it, of course, but that was the net effect.) I don't believe this was an isolated situation, either.

Thus, there is no institutional incentive for cost effeciency and innovation. I think that an organization independent of this process is the only way to achieve greater cost effeciency in the near term. In the long-term the institutional incentive must be changed. A new contractor (Scaled) is a start, and maybe this is the catalyst.

Prehaps the government project managers in charge of this NASA/DoD project have found a way to resist or avoid this dis-incentive system. [Insert diety here] knows all the project managers I worked with wanted to. I'm hoping so.