Free Republic

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...

One assumption which everyone in the space community has been making is that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which NASA plans to use for future human spaceflight will be placed into low Earth orbit by a heavy-lift version of either the Atlas 5 or the Delta 4 EELVs. This, in turn, implies the end of NASA’s efforts to develop and build a reusable launch vehicle (RLV). One sign of this is the stream consistently negative comments on the RLV concept from Administrator Sean O’Keefe. This may be a case of sour grapes, since NASA has so often failed to come...