[The first in a series of posts from the Space Access ’10 conference this week in Phoenix.]
Dan Rasky of NASA Ames presented on the status of their Commercial RLV Technology Roadmap Study, seeking to identify what technologies needed for such vehicles (both suborbital and orbital) are of most interest to industry. The full details of the effort are in his slide presentation, posted here by popular request. The goal, he said, is to have an interim roadmap ready to present at the NewSpace 2010 conference in July at NASA Ames; the final version will be out in September.
One interesting note from the presentation: Rasky said that NASA Dryden recently acquired the two airframes from the canceled X-34 program. They had been in storage since the program’s cancellation when a Dryden employee bought them for $1 each from Orbital Sciences, but when he retired the airframes were dragged out to the bombing range at Edwards AFB. Fortunately the airframes were recovered intact, although several crates of other X-34 parts were lost. Rasky said his office is trying to get some funding to study the airframes and determine their potential viability for future integrated flight tests, something the roadmapping study has found considerable interest for so far.
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