Nasa Lockheed Martin X-33 spaceplane

Lockheed Martin's X-33 was to be a sub-scale suborbital technology demonstrator for a singe-stage-to-orbit resuable spaceplane to be called Venturestar. NASA cancelled the X-33 in 2001 before the demonstrator was complete.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Lockheed
• NASA
• X-plane
• spaceplane

[mj1234321]

It's a shame that we've given up on advancing, and now NASA is going back to capsules and expendable launchers.

[sopps]

Lifting hull design.

[1006christopher]

@whitelancer64 notice how there are no major space corps at all, no new innovation beecause it's not open to the public because NASA always undercuts price since they just have to go and tell the government they want more money.

[whitelancer64]

@MetalMonarchy Lockheed Martin continued working on the technologies, certainly. they may have completed the craft and even flight tested it in 2007 and 2009, but that has not been confirmed. they may have launched a different craft entirely.

[whitelancer64]

@1006christopher no, it was cancelled because it went over budget, was overweight, and they could not complete the composite fuel tank, which was one of the critical technologies they wanted to test.

[1006christopher]

They cancelled it because the US is trying to keep people from commercialising space, due to with this then it wouldn't be far before some person figured out a bigger version which would eventually lead to discoverys of materials on other planets by other countries and resulting in more pointless wars than we already got.....

[HumanCompound]

Those wheels doesnt look like woulda hold that thing.

[tehatemachine]

@Chuckqnit THEY WORK NOW!!! but it was ironically done by lockheeds competitor, northrop. lol

[xskatrjakex]

It's cancelled as far as we know, for all we know Nasa is havng tea parties on Mars, while dancing with Aliens

[USAmilitarypower]

is this the htv-2

[ryanscottweise]

There's tests still running though in 2007 and 2009 and they were both a success so it hasn't been canceled completely . If it works they might get it working again .

[Chuckqnit]

Lovely, elegant little craft. It's a shame the materials necessary for the honeycombed fuel compartments didn't pan out.