X-33 SHUT DOWN NASA ENDS $1.2 BILLION PROGRAM.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Once envisioned as paving the way for a new reusable spaceship, the $1.2 billion X-33 rocket plane is being canceled without ever flying.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials announced Thursday they are cancelling the program because spending more taxpayer money to make the wingless, wedge-shaped craft fly wouldn't be justified by what they would learn from testing it.

NASA also is cancelling the smaller X-34 rocket plane, on which the space agency had already spent more than $200 million.

``This has been a very tough decision, but we think it's the right business decision,'' said Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, which manages both programs.

Lockheed Martin officials said it is too early to say what will happen to the 110 workers remaining in Palmdale on the X-33, which has been stalled since a hydrogen fuel tank broke during testing in November 1999.

The X-33 program will come to an end March 31, when the cooperative agreement between NASA and Lockheed Martin expires. The program could continue if Lockheed Martin decides to fund it out of its own pockets, but that is unlikely, a company spokesman said Thursday.

The X-34 program, developed by Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is canceled as of today. NASA officials said a program review last year indicated that continuing the program would require more NASA involvement and more money.

The survival of both programs had been dependent upon them winning funding under NASA's Space Launch Initiative program, an effort to reduce the technical risks and develop technologies to start the building of a new, reusable spaceship by 2005. The SLI program has $900 million to spend on studies over the next 2 1/2 years.

NASA and Lockheed Martin officials would not disclose how much was being sought to keep the X-33 alive.

``Obviously we're disappointed,'' said Lockheed Martin spokesman Evan McCollum. ``Aside from X-33, we have submitted proposals for a broad range of SLI studies. We are optimistic we will get funding. NASA wants to build a second-generation vehicle and we want to help them.''

The X-33, which was being assembled in Palmdale, was to test technologies Lockheed Martin planned to use in a spaceship called VentureStar. The spaceship was envisioned to take off like a rocket, fly into space, deliver satellites into space, and then return to Earth, landing like a space shuttle.

The VentureStar was envisioned as a ``second generation'' of reusable spaceship after the space shuttle.

Lockheed Martin faced a daunting technical goal, called single-stage-to- orbit: making a rocket plane that could get into space in one piece, without dropping booster rockets as even the space shuttle does, then land like an airplane.

Nearly the size of a space shuttle but piloted by computers, the X-33 was supposed to make hypersonic test flights from Edwards Air Force Base to landing fields in Utah and Montana, skimming the edge of space. The flight to Montana was supposed to take 24 minutes.

At one point, Lockheed Martin had about 600 people working on the X-33 in Palmdale. There are now 110 people working on the X-33 in Palmdale and an additional 62 workers at a Lockheed Martin facility in New Orleans.

It is too early to tell what will happen to those workers, officials said. It is possible that if Lockheed Martin's other proposals under SLI are funded some of those workers could be put on those projects.

The cancellation came as a disappointment to Palmdale officials.

``It's something that we took pride in, in that it was based in Palmdale,'' said Mayor Jim Ledford. ``We did everything we could to try to make it a success. I thought we'd at least see the X-33 launched.''

Despite the cancellation, the Antelope Valley will see future space programs because of its aerospace industry and tradition and the availability of a skilled work force, the mayor predicted.

``This community will always play a role in launch vehicle construction,'' Ledford said.

NASA had invested $912 million in the X-33. Lockheed Martin and its aerospace industry partners initially invested $212 million, then increased their commitment to $357 million when technical problems arose.

The NASA/Lockheed Martin investment included the building of a launch site in a remote section of Edwards.

The X-33 appears to have suffered a fatal blow in terms of NASA financing when a fuel tank, made of lightweight composite materials, cracked and fractured during tests in November 1999 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The development of the lightweight tanks was a key technology NASA believed was needed to meet VentureStar's goal of flying into space in a single stage.

``Without the composite tanks and other technologies, we're really stretching it to get single-stage-to-orbit,'' Stephenson said. ``Based on what we're hearing from industry, for the second generation vehicle, single-stage-to-orbit is not viable.''

NASA is focusing on multi-stage rockets for the second generation spaceship.

Both the X-33 and X-34 programs were started in 1996, during the Clinton administration. Then vice-president Al Gore made the announcement that year that Lockheed Martin's X-33 had won a government competition to test new technologies for future spaceships.

Stephenson said the decision to cancel both programs was made after a review of SLI proposals that involved more than 300 people across NASA.

``The outcome had nothing to do with who's in the White House,'' Stephenson said.

The X-33 is more than 75 percent complete, housed in a hangar Lockheed Martin is leasing from SR Technics America in Palmdale. More than 90 percent of its components had been delivered.

All of the hardware and software developed for the program are jointly owned by Lockheed Martin and NASA. No decisions have been made about what to do with the equipment.

The X-33 did create some valuable technologies, Stephenson said, among them the creation of the linear aerospike engines built by Boeing's Rocketdyne division in Canoga Park, new advanced thermal protection, and ``self-healing'' electronic instruments.

Although the X-34 was being developed for NASA by Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., the program also had Antelope Valley ties.

Initial ground tests on the first X-34 vehicle were conducted at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards. The program also conducted tests to determine the suitability of Dryden's modified B-52 bomber as the X-34's launch aircraft.

A portion of the flight testing of the X-34 program was also slated to be done at Edwards.

Like the X-33, the X-34 program was aimed at testing technologies for future spaceships. Among the technologies NASA had originally planned to test using three X-34 vehicles were composite airframe structures; composite reusable propellant tanks; cryo insulation and propulsion systems; and low-cost electronic systems.

A version of this story appears in Business.

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NASA has canceled the X-33 program, citing costs.