Lockheed Martin X-33
X-33 is the designation of a prototype for a planned successor to the space shuttle, which was known as the "Venture Star". There should be a fully reusable space shuttle arise, the vertical launch with the help of novel aerospike engines and finally to land like an airplane again.
As fuel were liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen ( O2 ( l ) H2 ( l) or English LOX/LH2 ); both should be carried in internal tanks made of composite materials. The start-up costs of the venture Stars should be reduced to one-tenth that of the Space Shuttle.
On 2 July 1996, the NASA Lockheed Martin Skunk Works chose to X -33, to develop a prototype and testbed for new technologies, and build. X-33 should carry out several test flights in the atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 15, and are driven by two developed at Rocketdyne XRS -2200 linear aerospike engines.
Because of massive cost overruns and problems in the development and manufacturing was the Venture Star program and thus officially given up to 85% finished X-33 on 1 March 2001 by NASA. In particular, the manufacture of fuel tanks made of composite materials has been problematic; For example, the hydrogen tank failed during a test in November 1999. too, the empty weight of the space shuttle caused problems. It increased during development to continuously and so reduced the payload capacity. On the other hand, the development of the new aerospike powerplant was largely successful, also built a launch pad for the X-33 in Edwards Air Force Base. A total of up to adjust the X-33 program by NASA 912 million and Lockheed Martin $ 357 million has been invested. Of these, about half flowed into the development of the XRS- 2200 engine.
Likewise, Kistler Aerospace and Beal Aerospace failed in the commercial attempt to build a new launcher. Boeing developed the Atlas V on for the transport of astronauts, the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Blue Origin follow-up systems for the Space Shuttle.