A List Of Top Ten Scrapped Spaceships

Discovery Space provides interesting Top 10 List of Scrapped Spaceships. Favorite designs are the Wernher Von Braun Ferry Rocket, Project Orion, an atomic spaceship, Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar and the Lockheed X-33 Venture Star. In "Almost Famous: The X-20 DynaSoar," The Living Moon article reveals: "The semi-winged DynaSoar evolved greatly. The basic idea was to lob the bird into low Earth orbit and skip across the upper atmosphere like a rock across a pond, a concept then known as "dynamic soaring." Then some wag decided to shorten the term to "DynaSoar"-perhaps forgetting the fate that awaited the craft's prehistoric namesakes!...Then a proposal was developed that would have seen three stages in development-DynaSoar I, II, III, and finally the operational DynaSoar Manned Orbital Weapons System." The X-planes seem certainly direct ancestors of present X-37 Orbital Test Vehcile, history implies a weapons program and reason for strong protests from Russia and India concerning X-37 mission.


George Dyson, science historian, reviews Project Orion in a TED talk below. Freeman Dyson, George's father, worked on project to build 4,000 ton nuclear powered spaceship to travel to Saturn.

x-37b: usaf project, nro research

You can follow robo-shuttle, or if you're Russia and China, a space plane and secret weapon from humble beginnings under NASA X-33 project to present adoption by United States Air Force (USAF). The X-37B is shrouded in secrecy, its objectives never publicly declared. The present writer believes, if you cannot declare publicly there's a reason. Are X-37B objectives a matter of national security, i.e., war? Space Travel article by Morris Jones, an Australian writer, asks the questions not found in the mainstream American press.  The Australian wonders what is behind closed payload doors--as picture labels it--in the experimental bay?  Morris believes two testing programs are conducted: 1) space plane and 2) the cargo.  The second experimental program "... is the cargo carried inside... In principle, there's no strictly technical reason for both of these programs to be carried out in parallel on the same mission. But the 'twin tests' have probably come about for practical reasons. The history of the program yields some light on this."

The article continues with pairing of X-37B with a renewal of spy satellite research by the NRO and a dovetailing of interests. "For the NRO, the X-37B program provides a timely opportunity to do recoverable testing of such items[new operational spy satellites]." "X-37B: This Is Only A Test," is a must read and agree, "... some mysteries can be solved by deduction," others will simply remain due to government and military blackout.