Engine for X-33 Rocket Plane Behind Schedule
Boeing has fallen seven months behind schedule and is facing mounting costs on its revolutionary engine for the X-33 rocket plane, an experimental vehicle at the heart of NASA’s effort to develop a low-cost reusable space launcher, the government disclosed Tuesday.
The setback was caused by technical difficulties in bonding key high-temperature engine parts at Boeing’s Rocketdyne facility in Canoga Park, where the X-33’s novel linear aerospike engine is being built.
Rocketdyne has said the problem will add $36 million to the X-33’s cost and will delay delivery of the engine until September. The vehicle is now scheduled to take its first flight in December 1999, according to Lockheed Martin, the lead X-33 contractor.
The X-33 is a test project intended to study the feasibility of a design for a significantly cheaper reusable rocket, one that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes will one day replace the pricey and aging space shuttle fleet.
Although the X-33 is only an experimental project, Lockheed Martin has an ambitious plan to develop a full-scale space launcher that supporters hope would be launched from Southern California. Such a project would be a key part of the region’s growing prowess in spacecraft and launch systems.
NASA has committed a maximum of $941 million to the project under a fixed-price contract, and the team of contractors expects to spend an additional $200 million or more of its own money on the X-33.
The $36 million in extra engine construction costs is likely to be paid by Rocketdyne, according to Jerry Rising, a vice president at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.
“We are not going to add any more [funding] to the program, so we’re expecting Rocketdyne to make up that difference,” Rising said. However, he said the companies have not yet agreed on how to pay for the overrun.
The aerospike engine presents a major technical challenge for the X-33 program. Rocketdyne has been struggling to perfect the brazing process used to join components of the engine’s nozzle ramp, which replaces the bell-shaped expansion chamber on conventional rocket engines. It is a V-shaped section that gets bombarded with exhaust flames.
Still, X-33 project officials Tuesday said they remain upbeat about the vehicle’s prospects. Although the delay is a disappointment, Rising said, it will not derail X-33 assembly operations, which employ 600 to 700 workers at the Skunk Works facility in Palmdale.
He said the company may have to reassign some employees at the plant but that the new delay will not result in major layoffs. However, Rising said the company has halted all overtime on the project, since the X-33 is no longer pushing for a mid-1999 flight.
Meanwhile, other contractors on the project are glad to have the extra time before flight tests.
“I think most of us are happy that Rocketdyne said they were going to be late,” said an X-33 employee working at one of the subcontractors and who asked not to be identified. “I think everybody is running behind.”
With engine delivery now scheduled for next September, Lockheed has decided to finish assembly of the X-33 and ship it to Edwards Air Force Base for testing without the engines.
The idea behind the X-33 is that it will fly unmanned and take off like a rocket and land like a plane without the expensive second-stage boosters used today. It is a one-half-scale prototype of a reusable vehicle called the VentureStar.
VentureStar backers say the rocket plane’s development costs will be borne by private investors and that the cost for two vehicles and their space ports could total as much as $5 billion. The companies have not yet selected the permanent sites for the space ports, but California and many other states are bidding to house the project.
NASA and others in the space business have been backing the X-33 and a handful of other experimental launchers with the hope that some combination of them will replace the aging space shuttle in about a decade. NASA plans to use the VentureStar for transporting humans into space after the shuttle is retired. They also hope to replace today’s very expensive shuttle and the expendable rockets that typically carry commercial satellites into orbit and leave behind discarded rocket parts.
To deliver a satellite to orbit, current launchers cost an estimated $10,000 per pound; VentureStar aims to cut launch costs to as little as $1,000 per pound.
However, reusable rocket technology has been an elusive goal. For about half a dozen years, the government funded development of the National Aero-Space Plane, an earlier attempt to design a reusable launch vehicle that was ultimately abandoned.
That’s why observers are not surprised to hear of the latest glitches with the X-33.
“This is perfectly normal,” said John Pike, director of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists. “Any program worthy of the risk will have cost overruns and schedule delays.”
