Space Transportation Status Of The X 33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program

Author : United States Committee On Science
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330410080
Total Pages : 155 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (1 download)

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Download or read book The X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle: A New Way of Doing Business? written by United States Committee On Science and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle: A New Way of Doing Business?: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the Committee on Science, U. S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, First Session, November 1, 1995 The subcommittee met at 10:05 a.m. in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Good morning. Today the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics has convened a hearing on NASA's X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program. This program and its timely successful execution is fundamental to achieving the National Space Transportation Strategy issued by President Clinton last August. If America can develop a fully reusable launch system with a simplified airline-like operation, the U.S. Government will not only enjoy the most economical access to space ever invented in the history of the space program, the industry team responsible for making that rocket will be able to capture international launch markets throughout the world which were lost by U.S. firms during the last ten years. If we were operating in an ideal world, the NASA X-33 Program's limited budget of just over a billion dollars would leverage enough total investment by the X-33 Cooperative Agreement Teams to buy down the extraordinary technological risks associated with developing a radically cheaper launch system and leave private industry with only business risks to assume in developing an operational launch system that pays for itself, reduces the government's launch costs, and still makes money for its investors. But of course everyone here knows this. This is Washington, D.C., and not the ideal world. The purpose of this hearing is to judge the distance between the ideal program we all want and the program we have underway, a program which the House fully funded earlier this year. To begin with, the program appears to suffer from an identity crisis of the first order. On the one hand we are told X-33 is an advanced technology demonstrator like the X-l or the X-15; on the other hand, we are told that this is an industry-led technology demonstration designed to commercialize a new launch system. Which is it? And what will it be? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.