Something else former-President Clinton and former-VP Gore cost us.
Something else former-President Clinton and former-VP Gore cost us.
DC-X ping.
From my posting - The Path Not Taken - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1849387/posts
...The X-33 itself wasn’t designed to go into orbit; it was a subscale version intended to show that a larger orbital vehicle (called “VentureStar” by the winning contractor, Lockheed Martin) could be built commercially. Because it incorporated several cutting-edge technologies in a single vehicle, it was a very risky program, and in fact was chosen for that reason—NASA wanted to “push the technological envelope.”
... Lockheed Martin achieved its strategic business objective simply by winning the contract. If the X-33 project was a success, Lockheed would take away business from its competitors. And if it was a failure, Lockheed would prevent the development of a new vehicle to compete against its own existing Atlas and Titan rockets and its stake in the space shuttle. NASA apparently didn’t notice—or didn’t care—that by selecting an incumbent launch vehicle provider, there were intrinsic incentives for program failure. Nor did it occur to them, more generally, that one shouldn’t seek innovation from an entity with a massive stake in the status quo. In the end, the X-33 never flew and the project was cancelled in early 2001 after spending more than a billion dollars.