How NASA’s X-34 ended up rotting in someone’s backyard
Link here. The story is a wonderful illustration of the epic failure that NASA has represented for the past thirty years. They spent billions, and threw it all away before even one flight.
How the two partly built X-34 spacecraft ended up in someone’s backyard is fascinating in itself, and worth the read.
One detail the article misses is why the X-34 got cancelled in 2001: politics. This program was part of a range of space initiatives under the Clinton administration (including the X-33). All were overpriced and essentially boondoggles. When George Bush Jr. became president, his administration reviewed them all and junked them, replacing them with his own boondoggles (Constellation and Orion).
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
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Link here. The story is a wonderful illustration of the epic failure that NASA has represented for the past thirty years. They spent billions, and threw it all away before even one flight.
How the two partly built X-34 spacecraft ended up in someone’s backyard is fascinating in itself, and worth the read.
One detail the article misses is why the X-34 got cancelled in 2001: politics. This program was part of a range of space initiatives under the Clinton administration (including the X-33). All were overpriced and essentially boondoggles. When George Bush Jr. became president, his administration reviewed them all and junked them, replacing them with his own boondoggles (Constellation and Orion).
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I’ve worked on three NASA or Air Force easy access to space projects. The stages of these programs are as follows:
1. New program that will assure quick and easy access to space at drastically lowered cost.
2. Program is downgraded to an experimental effort to decrease cost of launch vehicles
3. Program is downgraded to a technology investigation for items that may be of future use
4. Program is cancelled.
5. Everyone goes to lunch
NASA , a political whore of the 1st magnitude. They charge top dollar,and , like any good hooker, they
“always get the money up front” Their flag should be the hammer & sickle. not the stars & bars….
or , old glory….
Michael, The Seven Phases of Project Management
1. Wild enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Confusion
4. Panic
5. Search for the guilty
6. Punishment of the innocent
7. Promotion of non-participants
First seen on a bulletin board early in my Army days (Seventies) and I’d be willing to bet it goes back at least to the Fifties if not before….which brings up
Cheops Law – No government project ever comes in under budget and on schedule
(Actually one did, the Pentagon (Yes, Really!) mainly because it was run by an absolute SOB of a colonel named Leslie Groves – next stop for him was two stars and the Manhattan Project (which was the second most expensive US Army project in WW2))
Sad story but not atypical of government bungling, unfortunately.
The picture that shows the two X-34’s parked across an apron from some other aircraft also shows one of those aircraft – the arrowhead-shaped one – to probably be one of only 2 F-16XL’s ever built. This was a modified F-16 with a stretched fuselage and a so-called cranked-arrow delta wing. This wing gave the F-16 a supersonic cruise capability without afterburner and roughly doubled its combat radius. It was also alleged to be even more nimble than the standard F-16. The project was a late-70’s early-80’s effort to build a multi-role F-16 that could compete with the then-also-in-development F-15 Strike Eagle. The F-16XL lost that competition. The prototypes have been at Edwards ever since. Looks like we now know where at least one of them was in 2015. The other planes around the F-16XL appear to be full or partial F-18 airframes. One hopes the F-16XL’s don’t eventually suffer the same ignominious fate as the X-34’s.