[hchutch]

The good news is we're getting ambitious.

The bad news is we're scrapping the shuttles - and I'd prefer to have our own form of getting to the space station as opposed to relying on the Europeans or Russians.

Time to bring back the X-30, X-33, and the Delta Clipper?

[Poohbah]

The X-30 was simply not possible--indeed, the engine technology (scramjet) has never demonstrated net thrust. The X-33 was, to quote the cavalry, "all horses**t and no gunsmoke." LockMart grossly exaggerated how much performance improvement the linear aerospike engine would produce. As for the Delta Clipper, that was a program that never had a real constituency (it was run out of the SDIO, and government funds died with the end of the SDI program), but it was definitely the most promising of the three.