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SPACEPLANE SHELVED? For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few...

If Dyna-Soar and the Space Launching System had been completed, the United States would have had by 1965 a modern modular launch vehicle launching a reusable manned spaceplane -- something it now hopes to accomplish with the Delta IV / OSP by 2010. The nation could have been spared the false premise of the shuttle program and had a space station ferry in being by the beginning of the 1970's. It might even have been flying well into the 21st Century, while the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle were consigned to the trash heaps of history.

Featured Book: Dyna-Soar: Hypersonic Strategic Weapons System by Robert Godwin "Anyone who has followed this series of books may feel compelled to ask the question: Why the Dyna-Soar? They may well even ask: What is the Dyna-Soar?The main reason for including this particular vehicle in our ongoing series lies in its remarkably foresighted design. Clearly the Dyna-Soar/X-20 was way ahead of its time (even though it was not completed) and that sort of advance in technology is expensive; consuming a sizeable portion of the military budget and employing nearly eight thousand people for over six years.In many ways it...