TESTING OF X-34 SET FOR FEBRUARY LOW-TECH TEST AWAIT X-34 AAIRCRAFT BIG RIG TRUCK WILL HELP DEVELOP SPACE PLANE.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - The X-34, an unmanned experimental aircraft designed to prove technologies for future spaceships, will begin its test life in a low-tech fashion - being towed behind a big rig tractor on Rogers Dry Lake bed.

Beginning in mid-February, the aircraft will be towed at speeds up to 80 mph by a semi-truck to check out its guidance and navigation system, nose wheel steering, braking, rudder speed brake and rudder steering.

The X-34 will be attached to the truck by a 500-foot rope with electrical connections to provide communications between the aircraft and ground test engineers. The X-34 will be towed for up to 10,000 feet - nearly two miles - across the flat lake bed, NASA officials said.

Following 16 ground tests, the X-34 will be shipped to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for a series of five unpowered flights. The X-34 will be carried aloft by a modified L-1011 jetliner to an altitude of 35,000 and released.

``These glide flights will give us an understanding of how the X-34 separates from the L-1011 and its flight characteristics,'' said Jeff Sexton, flight-testing and operations project manager for the Pathfinder program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. ``We will be able to test its control surface effectiveness, validate the flight software that controls guidance, navigation, final approach, touchdown and landing rollout without rising the two fully functional powered flight vehicles.''

The X-34 is about the size of an F-15 fighter jet - 58 feet long with a wingspan of 27 feet. During powered flights using the second and third X-34 aircraft, program officials hope to reach speeds of about 5,600 mph and altitudes of up to 250,000 feet.

The second X-34 is scheduled to make its first flights from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards this year. The third X-34 is in the early stages of production and will be used late in the series of of the planned 27 flight tests, NASA officials said.

The X-34s are being built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp., a Dulles, Va., company, under a contract with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Among the technologies the X-34 program will test include composite airframe structures; composite reusable propellant tanks; cryo insulation and propulstion systems; thermal protection systems; and low-cost electronic systems.

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Photo: (color) The first of three planned X-34s, an unmanned experimental space aircraft, will begin testing next month at Rodgers Lake bed on Edwards Air Force Base.