SPACE 'LIFEBOAT' TEST FLIGHT NEARS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - While NASA tries to put the overbudget International Space Station on track financially, the agency is moving forward with flight tests of an experimental craft aimed at developing technologies for a space station ``lifeboat.''

On Thursday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to conduct what it describes as the highest, longest and fastest flight test to date of the X-38, a stubby, wingless smaller-scale version of the proposed space station lifeboat.

``One of the big differences in this test is that while it's under parafoil control we will have a pilot in a remote cockpit in a van send commands to the X-38 for a couple of minutes,'' said Jeff Fox, a flight test engineer on the program.

Astronaut Ken Ham, a former Navy test pilot, will fly the X-38 for the test, looking at a video image of the view out of the craft's cockpit. For landing, the X-38 will revert back to the computer system that has guided it in other previous flights.

The X-38 does not have an engine, but will be carried to 45,000 feet altitude by a modified B-52, then dropped.

The X-38 will be in a free flight for 47 seconds and then deploy a 7,500- square-foot parafoil - a sort of rectangular, steerable parachute - that will be used to steer it to a soft landing.

The actual space station lifeboat, referred to by NASA as the Crew Return Vehicle, will be a fully automated craft, requiring just the push of a few buttons to send it on its way back to an Earth landing. However, NASA does want to have the capability of the crew taking the controls in case of obstacles in the CRV's path.

The X-38 is not equipped to carry a crew.

In the last X-38 flight test in July, the experimental craft was dropped from a height of 37,500 feet and it had a free flight of 30 seconds before the parafoil was deployed.

The X-38 is pushing ahead, but the CRV program is uncertain because of difficulties NASA is facing with the International Space Station, a program that is $4.8 billion over its budget.

The House of Representatives had put $275 million for the CRV in its version of NASA's 2002 budget, but that funding was later stripped by House and Senate negotiators working to reconcile their different budget bills. Negotiators cited the uncertainty over how NASA would get the space station program on track as the reason for stripping that funding.

House-Senate negotiators did include $40 million for the X-38 program, saying there is a need to keep their options open for the CRV.

``We're still budgeted to keep going,'' Fox said. ``We're pressing on with this program.''

The X-38 team is in the middle of flight-testing five X-38 aircraft, each about 80 percent the size of the actual CRV. The first X-38, a bare-bones vehicle intended to test the parafoil concept, was first flown in 1998.

The second X-38 was equipped with a flight control system.

The first X-38 was reshaped to more closely resemble the expected final shape of the crew return vehicle and is the vehicle that will be flown Thursday.

That vehicle will make four or five more flights, with the next coming in the summer.

In 2003, NASA plans to take the fourth X-38 into space aboard a space shuttle. The X-38 will then fly itself back to Earth, a key milestone for the program.

The fifth X-38 will provide further validation of the systems used on the space flight.

An option under consideration is to turn the spaceflight test craft into an actual space lifeboat, smaller and less expensive than the planned one but unable to hold an entire station crew of seven.

The smaller lifeboat would be able to hold only four astronauts, and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft would be needed for the others if the entire crew had to be evacuated in an emergency.