Pegasus Boost Rocket Fails
X-43A Test Vehicle Destroyed

The Hyper-X program is a five-year, $185 million effort to demonstrate future hypersonic propulsion and airframe technologies. While vehicles with conventional rocket engines carry oxygen on board, the air-breathing X-43A scramjet ingests and compresses oxygen from the atmosphere using the vehicle's uniquely shaped airframe.

Dulles - June 2, 2001
The test flight of an experimental X-43 hypersonic aircraft failed Saturday when its booster rocket lost control five seconds after being released from a launch plane, the US space agency NASA said. The Pegasus rocket, carrying the X-43, was launched over the Pacific Ocean at 2044 GMT at an altitude of 7,300 meters (24,000 feet), but went out of control. Flight controllers destroyed both vehicles, NASA spokesman Alan Brown said.
NASA Opens Second Generation RLV Office at Huntsville
Huntsville - May 15, 2001
The Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. - the office that oversees the Space Launch Initiative - will now report directly to the Director of NASA's Marshall Center. This program previously reported to the Director of Marshall's Space Transportation Directorate.
X-33 Aerospike Engine Tests Continue
St. Louis - Feb. 7, 2001
Qualification test firings of the unique engines designed to propel America's X-33 space plane into high-speed, suborbital flight in 2003 began Tuesday at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss. The ignition test went the full scheduled duration of 1.1 seconds with no observed anomalies.

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X-43 Gears Up For Test Flight At Dryden
Edwards - Feb. 2, 2001
The first of three hypersonic (X-43A) research vehicles started the final preparations toward a flight in early summer, as the second vehicle arrived on January 31, 2001, at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California.

Kelly and Vought Team Up For New Spaceplane
San Bernardino - Jan 23, 2001
Kelly Space and Vought Aircraft Industries, Inc. jointly announced today that the two companies recently signed a teaming agreement and submitted proposals to develop, in cooperation with NASA, a 2nd Generation Reusable Space Launch Vehicle (RLV) System and associated technologies.

Shrinking The Planet To A Few Hours
Sydney - Jan. 6, 2000
Sydney to London. Frankfurt to Melbourne. Brisbane to Capetown. These are long flights. Not just long in distance, but necessarily involving many long hours of sitting in one place, squirming around a pokey seat trying to get some sleep while some clown behind you sings Welsh rugby songs and an 18-month-old with a brand new tooth howls her way across the entire Indian Ocean.

Repairing Shuttle Glitches On The Fly
Ann Arbor - Jan. 6, 2000
Ever stop and think about the millions of dollars spent on fancy space equipment that breaks down once it becomes airborne? If you are millions of miles away orbiting the Earth, there's no repairman available to fix the problem.

Scramjets Could Rocket Australia Into 21st Century
Sydney - Jan. 6, 2000
Dr. Allan Paull and his crew at the University of Queensland's Centre for Hypersonics are about to make the first test flight of their brand new toy - the world's first operational scramjet. If the thing works, the UQ scramjet will be the fastest air-breathing engine ever built, capable of pushing aircraft along at up to ten times the speed of sound.

Aerojet To Expand Engine Study To Include RLVs
Sacramento - Nov. 27, 2000
The Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center have awarded Aerojet $7.9 million in added in-scope work on the Integrated Powerhead Program, which is demonstrating propulsion technologies that will be applied to the main engine for a military space launch vehicle or a shuttle replacement.

Will Plasma Revolutionize Aircraft Design
London - Oct. 28, 2000
They can reduce drag, repel shock waves and make jet fighters vanish. Will plasmas start an aerospace revolution, or are they just another mirage? To look at, the test vehicle suspended in the hypersonic wind tunnel is little more than a cone. But inside is a small device that could revolutionise the way aircraft fly, saving fuel and heralding a new age of travel.

Click for RLV Reports Jan-Sept 2000

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