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"'La force motrice' of Reusable Launcher Development: The Rise and Fall of the SDIO's SSTO Program, From the X-Rocket to the Delta Clipper" Introduction. NASA commissioned me to document the development of the X-33 in March of 1997. The X-33 is an advanced technology demonstrator vehicle intended to flight test technologies deemed critical for eventually building a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket transport. Those technologies include a metallic thermal protection system, an aerospike engine, and composite cryogenic hydrogen tanks. As part of the history project, I chose to write about the SDIO's SSTO Program as a predecessor to the X-33, even though...

U.S. Must Move to Full Missile Defense by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.Posted Oct 09, 2006This week, HUMAN EVENTS begins an occasional series of exclusive articles in which leading conservatives who served in the Reagan Administration explain how they believe the principles of Reagan conservatism ought to be applied today and in the coming years. This week, Frank Gaffney, who served in Reagan’s Defense Department, addresses the issue of missile defense. Ronald Reagan is now esteemed around the world for having the vision and the leadership skills to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union. He is less widely appreciated...

The news about the successful missile defense test conducted Friday by the Defense Department came at an opportune moment. Not only do we have constant reminders from North Korea and Iran of the importance of this program, but the program itself has been in real need of a boost, because congressional appropriations have been lagging.

Lost in Space By Henry F. Cooper and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr.,The Wall Street Journal, reprinted in Missile Threat.com in toto, August 31, 2006 Consider the implications of North Korea's July 4 missile tests. While the Taepondong-2 failed, Pyongyang has already demonstrated (in 1998) that it can launch long-range rockets. Meanwhile, the six short- and medium-range missiles it successfully tested can be sold to other rogue states and terrorists -- who could launch them at us from ships off our coasts. When North Korea launched its missiles in July, what President Bush has properly termed our "modest" missile-defense system was...

Symposium: Star Wars DefenseBy Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | August 25, 2006  The critical issue of Missile Defense now confronts our nation. The key questions remain: How mandatory is it? What is the threat that we need to protect ourselves against? What kind of system do we need? Is the one that is in the plans effective enough? How expensive will it be and how long will it take to build? And do we have the political will and leadership to get it done?   To discuss these issues with us today, we have assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests are: Thomas Karako, the Director of Programs...

Report Supports Sea-, Space-Based Missile DefensesGlobal Security Newswire, August 4, 2006 The United States should focus on developing sea- and space-based missile defenses rather than expanding ground-based systems beyond the interceptors already deployed in Alaska and California, according to a experts’ report issued last month (see GSN, May 11).“Near-term options exist for developing viable sea-and space based defense within the next decade resulting in a comprehensive, global layered missile defense system,” says the 202-page report from the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the 21st century.“This option would complement the [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] system currently being...

Experts debate space-based BMD assets [More Usual Suspects] By JESSICA TAYLOR UPI, July 25, 2006 WASHINGTON, July 21 (UPI) -- A new report claims U.S. anti-ballistic missile defenses must be deployed in space to be effective, but critics disagree. Several analysts say the study is based on false pretenses and the deployment of defense mechanisms into space is not in national security interests. The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank, has issued a study saying the implementation of plans for space missile defense is critical for U.S. national security and an effective system against at least some...

Going on Offense for Missile Defense Defending ourselves has never made more sense. by Fred Barnes 08/07/2006, Volume 011, Issue 44 SENATOR CARL LEVIN of Michigan had a grim and unhappy look on his face. For years, he had led Democrats in an effort to slash funding for missile defense. He had planned to seek a cut of $68 million. But with North Korea poised to launch missiles and Iran's relentless drive to go nuclear, the situation had changed. So much so that Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama proposed to boost spending on the missile defense program, now more than...

The High GroundThe next missile-defense battle heats up in space. Sometime between now and the end of September, President Bush will tell Americans that the United States finally has a rudimentary missile-defense system. The announcement will come shortly after the Pentagon activates a handful of interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. They'll be advertised as capable of stopping a limited ICBM attack from the likes of North Korea. Democrats then will repeat their standard arguments about why it's better to have no missile defenses at all. They'll say that it costs too much,...

Insight on the News - Daily Insight Issue: 10/01/02 Brilliant Pebbles Beached Under Bush By Zoli Simon While the Bush administration is not focusing much on the space-based Brilliant Pebbles missile defense system, the Virginia-based missile defense group High Frontier thinks that Pebbles is the way to go. To read High Frontier's issue brief, click on the link below: www.highfrontier.org/2002_issue_briefs.html www.highfrontier.org2002 Strategic Policy Issue Briefs Issue Brief 76, September 13, 2002 When Oh When Will They Revive Brilliant Pebbles?     While there are some errors in the following September 10th Oakland Tribune articles written by Ian Hoffman, they contain...

Brilliant Pebbles and its original braintrust of physicists -- the mercurial Edward Teller, lead co-inventor of the H-bomb, and his creative proteges, defense theorists Lowell Wood and Greg Canavan -- are entwined in the public memory of the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative. In the early 1980s, Teller sold Reagan on the technical feasibility of making nuclear war obsolete, then assembled Wood and Cavanan month after month in 1986 for strategic thought exercises, based on John Nash game theory. Wood played attacking Soviet forces, the red team; Canavan played the American defenders, the blue team; Teller refereed. Canavan stretched his imagination...