HOUSTON – Couch potatoes and aerospace history buffs can have a field day with the X 38 crew return vehicle.
The craft, which looks like a cross between a bathtub and arrowhead, is being developed at Johnson Space Center, but it looks vaguely familiar.
NASA hopes to deploy the craft as a high-flying lifeboat for the International Space Station (
ISS) in 2006. The X 38 will replace the Russian Soyuz module to be used as an escape vehicle in the early years of ISS operations. Instead of seating the Soyuz’s three, the X 38 seats six.
| X 38 Factoids |
| On February 24, NASA plans to fly an X 38 in a "drop test" from an aircraft at Dryden Flight Research Center in California. Project Manager John Muratore said the test simulates flight conditions similar to those encountered when a reentering craft deploys a para-foil. |
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| A prototype of the parafoil to be used on the X-38 lowers a pallet to the desert floor near Yuma, Ariz. on January 19. The parafoil, the largest flown to date, has a surface area of about 7,500 square feet or a surface area 1.5 times grea ter than a Boein
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| Artist's conception of the X-38 crew return vehicle. Credit: NASA
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| The rocket-powered X-24B was the last in a series of wingless aircraft or lifting bodies tested at Edwards Air Force Base between 1963 and 1975. NASA's X-38 uses information gained from the research. Astute couch potatoes will recognize a v ersion of the
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| A 1963 photo from Dryden Flight Research Center in California, showing an inflatable wing on the back of a truck before a piloted test. Gemini and Apollo managers considered using such a device for capsule recovery on land rather than the expensive option
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TV and movie buffs along with space history fans might recognize the X 38’s ancestor -- the series of lifting bodies, particularly the X 24, tested at
Edwards Air Force Base in the 1960s and 1970s.
True lifting bodies eschew winged surfaces and instead rely on their belly’s flat surface to slow descent.
Actual lifting body footage appears in the opening credits of the 1970s TV drama,
The Six Million-Dollar Man. Hollywood also created their own version to fly a rescue mission to doomed Apollo astronauts in the 1969 space opera Marooned. The X 33 and VentureStar also incorporate lifting body technology.
But designing the X 38 isn’t totally an exercise in retro-technology.
"We’re integrating a bunch of new technology into this vehicle," said John Muratore, the X 38 project manager. "We’re also trying to find ways to build cheaper X-vehicles."
New technology built into the X 38 includes an on-board flight control system that uses a computer model of the craft for better control. Off-the-shelf avionics, including
global positioning systems, are also used to speed production and reduce costs.
The space agency is even revisiting a technique tested, but never used in the 1960s -- using an inflatable wing-type parachute to steer a space capsule toward a land-based touchdown.
Rogallo inflatable wings, similar to the airfoil shape of a hang glider, were tested as a more economical means of returning a capsule to Earth to avoid expensive recovery at sea. The idea never got past the testing stage.
Muratore hears a lot from space agency old timers about the concept.
"They’re very skeptical, but we’ve convinced some of them," he said. "Of course, some remain skeptical."
Instead of splashing down like a space capsule, the X 38’s para-foil will steer it to a landing on a runway much like an airplane or the
space shuttle.
The X 38’s rectangular para-foil looks like a larger version of ones used by skydivers. Project engineers sent aloft the largest para-foil ever flown during a January test in Arizona. This para-foil covers about 7,500 square feet (2,285 square meters), or about 1.5 times more surface than the wings on a Boeing 747.
Muratore said this latest version, dropped with a pallet from a C 130 Hercules, worked out bugs from earlier para-foils and will make for a smoother and safer ride for the X 38’s passengers.
"We’ve eliminated the twisting and pitching," he said. "We found twisting was largely due to the para-foil not inflating the same across the span."
Muratore said adding cloth inlets on the bottom of the para-foil help to inflate the canopy more uniformly.
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