SHAPE OF THE FUTURE; SPACE `LIFEBOAT' PROTOTYPE MAKES ARRIVAL AT DRYDEN.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

The X-38, a prototype of a ``lifeboat'' for the international space station, arrived Wednesday at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center to be prepared for tests later this summer.

The X-38 was flown to Edwards from Johnson Space Center in Houston by a C-17 transport. The X-38 was greeted by a handful of Dryden workers, including center director Ken Szalai and program leaders from Edwards and Johnson.

``This is the first ``X'' space airplane to come to the valley,'' said Bob Baron, Dryden's X-38 project manager. ``Maybe for the next 10 to 20 years we will see a whole series of ``X'' spacecraft coming to the Antelope Valley.''

The X-38 is intended to pave the way for the building of the ``emergency crew return vehicle,'' a spacecraft that would be docked to the international space station as a lifeboat. The spacecraft would fly back into Earth's atmosphere like the space shuttle, but land using a steerable rectangular parachute.

Just 28.5 feet long, with tall tail fins but no wings, the six-person crew-return vehicle would be small enough to fit inside the space shuttle's cargo bay - which is one way it might be brought up to the space station. The spacecraft would be guided by computer and would not require a pilot.

The same National Aeronautics and Space Administration B-52 bomber that carried the X-15 rocket planes in the 1960s will hoist aloft the X-38, then drop it for its computer-controlled flight back to Edwards. Like the final version, the X-38 would land using a steerable rectangular ``parafoil'' parachute.

The first drop tests will be conducted in late August or in September. The B-52 will drop the X-38 from about 20,000 feet.

``As soon as the bomber drops it, within four seconds, the parafoil will come out,'' Baron said.

Later tests eventually will reach 50,000 feet in altitude. Those tests, using a second X-38 test aircraft, will involve flying the vehicle before deploying the parafoil.

Four to six drop tests will be conducted with the first X-38. Ten tests are scheduled for the second X-38. Those tests will lead up to a test flight from space back to Earth in 2000.

``If the tests go as well as we hope we might knock a year off of that and launch in 1999,'' said John Muratore, NASA's overall X-38 project manager.

NASA hopes to issue a contract for the construction of the actual space station lifeboats by October, 1998, and be ready for use by 2003.

The Fiberglas shells of the X-38 were fabricated in Mojave by Voyager designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites Inc. The instrumentation was installed by NASA at the Johnson Space Center.

Whenever possible, NASA used ``off-the-shelf'' instruments and electronic equipment to help keep costs down. NASA officials hope to build four operational spacecraft for $500 million, which would include the cost of the X-38 prototypes.

The original estimate to build a capsule-type crew return vehicle amount to more than $2 billion in total development costs, officials said.

European Space Agency officials are talking with NASA about using a modified version of the design to carry astronauts to the space station. The concept involves placing the spacecraft atop a French Ariane 5 booster.

The X-38 is based on a design concept called a ``lifting body,'' a design NASA engineers referred to as ``a flying bathtub.'' NASA Dryden Flight Research Center flew a series of the blunt-nose, wingless aircraft from 1963 to 1975.

As the X-38 was being unloaded from the C-17, Dryden director Ken Szalai said, ``The lifting bodies have returned to Dryden.''

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Photo: (color) A ground crewman transports the X-38, a prototype of a new space ``lifeboat,'' into a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base.

Jim Skeen/Daily News