Our team of talented wild and willy engineers at White Sands filmed this video live. I remember the day well. Good to see it posted here. I believe it was filmed with the VICS Van and several RICS data collection and video support Vans (various videos from different angles are probably archived at WSMR). We did many flights. Such fun times were had by all. Little did we realize at the time this is all we would have left for posterity sake of the Delta Clipper test program ...but the dream lives on in what Space-X and Blue-Origin are doing and have done. Best fun on Earth !
Hi. I understand that some of your team went on to join Blue Origin and the New Shepard program. I'd love to here any thoughts you may have regarding this.
@@zincfinger3817 i went down the list of senior people involved with this program and out of a dozen of them only one comes up on google, and hes been working for boeing as a program lead, since 1983. The rest of the senior leadership doesnt come up on google when you search their name + rockets. My guess is they aged out and retired before spacex and blue origin even came to being.
Actually, the DC-XA "Clipper Graham" (as it was called under NASA's tenure) flew four times for NASA before the final accident. Budgets were always tight, and when it crashed, that was it. The legacy of DC-X is this inspiration of dozens of private space companies: Blue Origin, SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space, Rotary Rocket Company, XCOR Aerospace, Kistler Aerospace, Kelly AeroSpace, Pioneer RocketPlane and more. Even though many of these companies failed, at least they tried.
many failed, but some succeeded fantastically! Different designs serve different purposes. This single stage design seems more useful to private industry (esp tourism) than to gov't. Perhaps one day it will also become the landing pod for a large interplanetary vessel too big to land itself.
Unfortunately this program was cancelled in favor of the Lockheed VentureStar program, which failed in the mock-up stage. Even as a former Lockheed employee this was a better design and actually flew. I had the opportunity to work on the fuel tanks...very cool tech!
I didn't think that the VentureStar actually failed, I though it was killed mostly for political reasons. They wouldn't compromise on using an aluminum tank for the early prototype.
@@EvanRossPlus the aluminum lithium tank would have weighed more, eating into the payload capacity. the payload capacity was just barely enough for the mission profile to start, so losing any of that payload made the thing useless. They just needed more time. Look at composite overwrapped pressure vessels now, they're used everywhere and spaceX even made a huge one. But even spaceX dropped the giant composite tank sections because of expense and complication for reuse (sudden failure without warning)
@@user-zj2mb3sp3x I remember in one doco they talked about how at the time to new aluminum tanks they came up with ended up lighter than the composite ones. The composite ones kept failing the pressurization tests, composite just wasn't there yet at the time.
VentureStar was nearly a BILLION in NASA funds and over a third of a billion in Lockheed funds and they still didn't have a working prototype. Delta Clipper was only $100 million and had numerous prototypes and successes at the point of cancellation.
+Reticuli I worked on the A-5 engines by Pratt the whole program was 60million and only had the DCX and the DCXA vehicles. It was canceled because a airforce grunt forgot to hook up a #4 an b nut for the landing strut and it tipped over and crashed when it landed.
+phaseed phaz You're right! Simple stupidity ended the program. That and politics/funding. Of the three companies contending for the X-33 program, only ONE company had a working, flying prototype. The rest were paper unicorns designed to wow Congress in hopes to suck more tax dollars. A paper unicorn won. McDonnell Douglas was struggling for any business at the time. Not long after the X-33 decision, Boeing purchased McDonnell, and the DC-X/A became another footnote in space history.
+phaseed phaz No, it was a Douglas technician who made the error. A few years after the accident, the guy was on my project. He did a very good job for us. Once bitten, twice shy?
+Samuel “Spaceman Sam” Coniglio The Rockwell proposal was based on proven space shuttle technology. Aluminum tanks, shuttle engines, conventional hydraulic flight control actuators, etc. The winning Lockheed design used composite tanks, aerospike engine, electromechanical flight control actuators, and so on. NASA specifically indicated that they wanted all-new technology and Rockwell ignored this, so of course they lost. Lockheed won exactly because they were a 'paper unicorn', as you stated, and that's what NASA wanted. It almost worked but the failure of the composite tanks doomed the project.
Actually, we called this the "Death Roll" flight. No other ballistic vehicle has ever lifted from the ground, dropped its nose below the horizon, then safely landed again all under rocket power.
as much as I'm a SpaceX enthusiast, their self landing Falcon booster rocket doesn't have but a fraction of the precision lateral movement ability of Delta Clipper, as you can see in many of the flight tests DC-X was able to change attitude from vertical to horizontal flight and back again, also its thrusters could be used while DC-X was *hovering*, in a fashion, to move sideways across the surface toward its landing pad to touchdown. Falcon and BO landings are still pre-planned flight paths, as opposed to having ability to change direction mid-flight at just a few hundred feet altitude.
@@cheewooleong5066 i do like the DC-X but comparing it to the falcon 9 first stage is like comparing apples to oranges. Delta clipper should be compared to Starship. The falcon 9 booster is incredible in the fact it goes through reentry, uses grid fins to accurately locate a droneship in the vast ocean and then performs the landing. The landing itself is the most incredible part of the falcon 9 booster. Take note that the booster does not have enough fuel to hover, more importantly there is no thrust setting on the merlin engines that will allow it to hover. The thrust is either too low or too high. Due to all these factors the falcon 9 does something known as hoover slam. Basically its landing burn thrust is only enough to reduce the impact of landing. Yet despite that, its able to survive landing and in some cases be ready to be reused in a month's time. This is an amazing feat of engineering where the spacex engineers have been able to get the most out of their booster. Furthermore another reason you cannot compare the delta clipper to falcon 9 is that the delta clipper was never tested in orbit, it never experienced reentry. It never had to target its landing zone from beyond the karman line. If i remember correctly the delta clipper was to be a single stage to orbit vehicle yet no prototype of it ever made it to orbit. For this reason its not fair to compare it to falcon 9 first stage. One is a regular working vehicle with an observed economic impact- spacex is the worlds leading launch provider, the owner of the world's largest satellite constellation. These have all been achieved through the partially reusable falcon 9. In comparison the delta clipper is a very interesting concept that never went any further than a few suborbital flights. A spacex prototype spacecraft that you should compare the DC-X to are the starship suborbital prototypes SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11 and SN15. While the Dc-X was capable of hovering, changing from vertical to horizontal fight, the starship prototypes mentioned have shown the ability to maneuver to a landing spot using flaps while in a horizontal configuration and then reorient to a vertical configuration for a landing. The comparison of these two vehicles DC-X and Starship sub-orbital protypes makes sense since the delta clipper and starship were meant to operate in orbit. Delta clipper was never realised and we don't know how well it would have done especially during orbital reentry something we saw tested with the recent starship flight test IFT4. We saw the starship survive orbital reentry, use its flaps to direct itself to a landing sport and execute a landing flip (moving from horizontal to vertical) and ignite its engines to land softly in the ocean. However the landing was not without issues which makes me wonder how an orbital delta clipper prototype would have performed.
@@cheewooleong5066 I suppose the response to that would be that they haven't really needed that capability to hit their targets for mission/cost, so why add it? Starship will have more capability, and stoke space - who are the first company whose in development hardware makes me stop and say 'Wow, this new; I like it' since SpaceX - will probably have similar capabilities on their medium class reusable upper stage. It definitely seems like the excitement of the 1990s is back, and it looks like this time it's here to stay.
True, tho to be fair SN8 test has to relit its engine, manuevering using its flaps, much higher apogee, full scale instead of subscale (aka. it's like when they go straight to testing DC-Y/DC-1, thus skipping DC-X entirely), and producing one new vehicle each month (with constant design improvements/iterations) instead of just one vehicle for all tests And most importantly, SpaceX done it mostly by their own funding & efforts :)
@@alvianchoiriapriliansyah9882 And I think the biggest reason DC-X is still “better” than Starship is that it had been developed much longer at this point in time. Starship has only been in development for about 1.5-2 years so far.
@@deltuhvee The current Starship iteration is about two years at this point, but they've been working on the concept for almost a decade at this point.
Mark O Yep. I was over at Bliss for a while and they were doing some temp testing on the patriot system and were were providing them coms back to bliss.
Wow, This thing is awesome. I never heard of this project. You would think this technology would have been continued. The concept reminds me of the old rocket-ships of 50s & 60s era sci-fi.
This and the X-33 were being looked at as the Future of NASA manned space flight. X-33 ran into trouble because its "unibody" fuel tanks, which were made of composites, were cracking and leaking due to the cold temperatures of the cryo fuels. Lockheed actually fixed that on their own Nickle! But by the time the fix was done, the Bush II people were in. X-33 was cancelled the what would become the useless SLS was chosen with re-hashed Apollo and shuttle tech. I saw on Curious Droid's RUclips page that part of the reason the X-33 was cancelled was its primary backer in the Government was Al Gore. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds petty enough to be so.
@@hajorm.a3474 Well, theres a big difference, since the starships have the bellyflop and landing as the main subject to test, plus they try to do it as late as possible, to keep it going at terminal velocity, meanwhile the DC-X's "bellyflop" maneuver was to get to the landing pad for a touch down, no aerodynamic reasons, non of that stuff. However, the DC-X project was a great feat of aerospace and proved the concept of untethered propulsive landing.
@@danimorcos7226 I'm a complete beginner when it comes to rockets and the like, why would they want to keep terminal velocity longer? Is it to do with fuel perhaps, in my mind you'd want to gradually slow a vehicle.
@@samconroyy Yes, fuel is the reason. If you don’t absolutely need the engines, shut them off. For Starship, terminal velocity is about 100 m/s. It takes very little time to get that to zero before the landing. For example, with a modest 1 g of deceleration, it takes about 10 seconds.
In 1988 there was a project started at Grumman in oyster bay LI to build the first Nuclear powered Rocket engine and in 1995 it was completed.......The reason i know this is because my aunt worked on the project and was in joint effort with alot of defense contractors aswell as BNL who came up with the idea for using helium to regulate the reactor.. It was called the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Program
No, the only propulsion was the 4 RL10 engines, nothing else. I think the bright plume was due to a mixture ratio shift as the throttle settings changed rapidly.
Dad was the Air Force lead on this program. It killed him when it was finally canned. It bothered me a lot too. This was an amazing craft that was ahead of its time, and should have gotten a lot more attention/funding. But it didn't. It isn't dark forces so much as ignorance, bit. I can tell you 2nd hand as the son of a R&D guy that there are so many people - leaders included - in this world who don't understand technology or what of it is worth investing in. Internet's full of tubes, remember!
I am an old engineer from that era, didn't have the chance to work on DC-X but was at McD in those days. DC-X was definitely *not ahead of its time*, rather she was the right ship and was making extraordinary progress at minimum funding level, but DoD & NASA were biased toward LockMart and bought into their fairy tales instead of properly funding Delta Clipper development after the crash. It would have cost relatively little to build another ship, and I'm convinced it would have led to a fleet of orbital ships that could have been visiting ISS in less than 5 years. Imagine the possibilities NASA squandered by walking away from DC-X, this should have been Starliner - operating for 3 decades flawlessly.
youtert not Elon but his team of specialist made this real. Btw the dcx was a slow low altitude booster. Nothing compared to the falcon who is able to vertically land from high speed and orbit altitude.
Michelle, yeah, it only took 22 years, the marvels of modern technology, 5000 overworked employees and a lot more money to do it... Then again, NASA landed on the moon 50 years ago. They even sent three electric cars up there. Then had actual people drive them around... Meanwhile, the millennials go crazy over the fact that musk put an old defunct Tesla in orbit - among the tons of other stuff from earth that is already floating around up there.
Kowalski K first the Tesla is brand new, unless few weeks for you its already old. Second, the Tesla is in deep space not orbital so it wont add to anything assuming you are talking about space debris. Finally we could had the falcon 9 technology much faster but the congress NASA and the old space club axed it in favor to the Venturestar who was just a pipe dream. Millenials are going crazy not because its spectacular, well yes maybe, but also because this has a deeper impact than a caprice of a random government. This is a private initiative its a business, and its cutting the cost and advancing technology. Less in a decade space X has been able to create never used before tecnology and its shaking the world of space. Sorry you cant see this.
Michelle, it actually was the original Roadster, from 2008. I don't think he would launch the brand new one, they probably only have a couple of test cars. As for going crazy, Falcon Heavy can lift twice as much as it's nearest competitor, at nearly a quarter of the cost. It can do it right now, not at some unspecified time in the future, and it can land and reuse all of the stage 1 boosters, which still nobody else has done on a commercial spacecraft yet. Not sure how you can't be excited about that. Would take 2 FH to lift the equivalent of Saturn V, at an adjusted cost of well under 20%.
gliders like the shuttle have so far proved less practical, in terms of both expense and safety, due mainly to their complexity (and the weight of those wings).
Not always. But don't forget this is nothing like the space shuttle. This is one intact craft, with everything, to orbit. The space shuttle rode two boosters and a ridiculously large, costly external fuel tank to space. It worked pretty well for what it was, but did cost alot to launch and reuse
this small ship, no it certainly wasn't built for orbital flight, but as a demonstrator and development platform it could have led to scaled up craft in a few years that could achieve orbit and then lead to the space transport that should have replaced STS shuttle.
So people are saying this is just like Starship when its way smaller and it flips back to vertical at apogee instead of before landing, which for obvious reasons is way easier. Being vertical for the entire descent isn't the same as falling horizontally and then flipping before landing.
@@brendanariki Oh, I don't doubt that. The point is that people keep equating this to Starship and using it as ammo to diminish how advanced Starship actually is.
@@dylanm.3692 It's not advanced at all. Starship is a crappy spaceship that looks like it was modeled by a kindergartener. This is 1990s technology and performed beautifully with computers that modern computers would put a shame on this.
Amazing how well that thing could fly. Is it true that that the failure was caused by a technician forgetting to plug in a hydraulic line? If so, I don't think that was a true failure. Also, whatever happened to the X-33 - anyone remember that one? The DC-X looked better though.
On further observation, the brightness appears to be caused by recirculation of the fuel-rich exhaust, possibly with particles blasted from the landing pad glowing. That IS a mighty sporty landing, typical for an optimized vertical profile with no constant-velocity phase. I figured out back in 1988 that A=1.32*V^2/S gives a linear throttle-down profile vs time, the McD-D team independently did the same.
It was. Among other things, the impact cracked the aeroshell, grounding the vehicle. That's why it was the final DC-X flight. It was easier to make repairs while it was being upgraded.
I agree but I think it fired extra rockets at the last second to cushion the landing. The Soyuz capsule, the vehicle everybody uses to get to and from the International Space Station now that the Space Shuttle is retired, does the same thing. Right before impact it fires some rockets to slow it down.
The ginormous question that remains unanswered: is SSTO actually practical? In terms of cost, re-usability, turnaround, efficiency? Gut reaction is no now that landing first stages are thing, but I'm willing to learn...
Pete Kuhns I doubt that SSTOs are worth it. The rocket would have to be huge and couldn't get very much to orbit, plus there is a good chance that the huge rocket could be destroyed on reentry and landing, resulting in a huge loss of money.
SSTOs have the potential to be incredibly cheap compared to other types of reaching orbit. If you are interested you should look up the skylon project. It's an SSTO spaceplane that is build arround a pretty unique engine concept which supercools and compresses atmospheric air so it can be burnt as oxidizer in a convential rocket nozzle. In theory this allows the plane to reach speeds of mach 5.5 in the upper atmosphere before switching to liquid oxidizer to reach orbit. The project is still in it's early stages but they did manage to create a working ground protype engine with apparently pretty promising results. It's still a bit of a long shot but if it works it has the potential to make flights to low earth orbit almost as routinely as normal commercial ones.
SSTOs will always be inferior to a multistage design when it comes to launching from earth. But sometimes there's other considerations. 20 years ago, the shuttle was providing ample evidence that reassembling a recovered rocket was expensive- they were trying to avoid that expence by never disasembling it in the first place. SpaceX, meanwhile, decided to figure out how to safely cut costs on refurbishment and reuse, with an extra 15 years of technoligy behind them.
Skylon (and its precursor HOTOL) is beautiful concept and i hope its engines are developed but its been around since the 80s and seems bogged down in its complexity and expense, reminiscent of the shuttle. (and might share a vulnerability, due to its similar ceramic tile heat shield) Meanwhile, SS1 & 2, and now Stratolauch have leaped ahead, by separating the two functions (air-aspirated jet and rocket) into two simpler stages, which avoids the task of dragging all the first stage hardware into orbit (and, crucially, bringing it back). Two fully re-usable stages seems to be optimum.
I guess it makes more aerodynamically predictable and keeps the conter of mass low? Pyramid shape is a very stable shape for buildings, so I guess it works for space crafts as well.
After two years, no serious answers… The short answer: It was designed to reenter the atmosphere nose-first so it could steer itself far off the original flight path. The long answer: One of the design goals for Delta Clipper was the ability to launch, fly one orbit around Earth to perform its mission, and finally land near back at the launch site. And if that wasn't already enough of a challenge, it would need to do it from a polar orbit. That is, an orbit that passes near the Earth's poles rather than just the equator. Specifically, that means launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, flying South over the Pacific ocean, passing over Antarctica, the Indian Ocean, then Asia (including the USSR), the Arctic Ocean and finally back to… whoops, Vandenberg isn't there any more! Even with a perfectly circular orbit, the planet is spinning, so now the landing pad is way off to the East. This is a much bigger problem for polar orbits since that takes a spacecraft the furthest from its launch site after one orbit. If you launched at the Equator directly East or West, you'd pass directly over the launch site on *every* orbit, that would be no good for spying since you'd only be able to see things that are near the Equator. The solution to this problem is to build a vehicle with a high cross-range capability; the ability to make large course corrections during reentry. Delta Clipper would hurtle through the thin upper atmosphere at hypersonic speeds with its nose pointed just a bit to the left, generating enough aerodynamic lift to pull it to the east and eventually catch up to Vandenberg. The test in this video was directly related to this, as it demonstrated the maneuver the vehicle would have to perform once it reached the launch site and had to flip around to perform the landing. On a side note: This is also generally believed to be the reason for the Space Shuttle Orbiters' massive delta wings. Their size and shape gave it the ability to generate lift while it was still extremely high in the atmosphere, was never needed for any of the flown missions. The USAF had been planning to build their own Space Shuttle fleet, and even built a launch site at Vandenberg, but eventually cancelled the entire program following the Challenger Disaster.
#2 - So what's the lesson to take from this? EDUCATE people! Spread the word! If you care about the sky and the space above us, if you think that our species needs to advance upwards and outwards, then let people KNOW that opinion! And don't disdain them when they disagree - CONVINCE them you have a point instead, and that things like this are IMPORTANT! Cheap access to space! Development OF it! And eventual expansion to other planets! Change starts with us, the people - our culture, our future!
Nope. It was just a "small" government project that couldn't find a home. Started with SDIO, then when it became BMDO they dropped it. My friends at the Space Frontier Foundation lobbied hard to find a new sponsor. Project moved to DARPA briefly, then to... NASA of all places!
It was designed to be suborbital, like its descendant the New Shepard, which Blue Origin hired some of the DC-X's engineers to build. Single stage to orbit is impractical (payload would be miniscule at best) mainly because of the much higher speeds necessary.
***** Yes, it was indeed a minor malfunction that led to catastrophe, and the loss of the vehicle and the program. A safing pin had been left in one of the four landing gear so it could not extend. The problem was that the DC-XA had the capability to have aborted its landing by ramping up the engines and firing back upward to burn off the excess fuel, then a parachute system would have deployed to bring it back down. After landing it almost certainly would have still toppled over, but with all fuel gone, it might not have exploded, and only minor repairs to the outer shell could have been easily made and the vehicle returned to the test program. I was there for an earlier flight which had a blow out of the skin before the vehicle left the pad, yet it flew a good flight and landed safely. New skin was put on and away she went.
***** Glad to help out. The Delta Clipper project was a wonderful one to have the opportunity to witness. If you see a video of a launch and listen to the commentary as the flight progresses, that is the voice of Pete Conrad, who also happened to land on the Moon on Apollo 12. He, and everyone else on this program were truly dedicated to getting human beings off this planet, and it is extremely sad that Pete is gone now, as is another who was instrumental in getting DC-X/DC-XA off the pad. His name was Bill Gaubatz, and he passed away this past summer. I was thinking of doing a book on the DCX as a follow-up to the one I did on the X-15, but after Bill's passing the heart went out of the idea.
@ Michelle Evans I hope you do that book. I can't think of a better way to honor them, and I'm sure they would have loved it for its positive addition to their life's work. ..and, now that others have taken up the idea and some of the engineering, its never been more relevant. the story should be told.
+Andres Guzman I was wondering that too, but I think it isn't. The rocket just suddenly cuts out, and so all of the bright orange light lighting up the smoke suddenly goes away.
Anyone interested in this VTVL tech should google Space X's Grasshopper program. Space X is coming on fast with the goal that all stages might one day be reusable.
Since you are in R&D I am sure you have run into "not thought of here" syndrome before right? NASA did not like this outsider project one bit. Then it was working! Of the sin o fof somethign working that NASA said could not! And on measly 60 mil budget to boot? So NASA is the "dark forces" that starved the funding, put in Russian built tanks with weld cracking issues, oh and a hydro line just happened to come loose too on the first flight under full NASA control. Seems pretty dark to me. :(
Imagine what our space program would have been like if they didnt axed it. Instead they for the venturestar that was just a over prized power point presentation. Thank you Elon for kicking old space in the nuts
+geerenmo Like SpaceX's Falcon 9, I'm assuming the DC-X did not have the ability to throttle down to a point where it could slowly hover to the ground. Instead, the engines fire at much higher thrusts, rapidly decelerating until the vehicle reaches a velocity of 0km/s right above the surface, and then instantly cutting engines so they do not begin gaining altitude again. I think SpaceX calls it a "hoverslam".
+geerenmo It's a suicide burn. You know how much thrust you're capable of generating, how fast you are accelerating or maintaining, so you know how long to burn the engines at full throttle to reduce your velocity to zero. It's fuel-efficient and easier than gradually decelerating.
Merlin 1D can throttle down to 40%, but there are 9 and they can shut down all but 3 or 1. The DC-X had four RL10A5 that could go down to 30%. I think they needed to land on all four though, so perhaps the mass to minimum thrust ratio was less favorable and required more of a suicide burn than F9? Not sure, looks pretty abrupt though.
Chinmay C Such "too big to fail companies" have lobbyists in the Washington and solid connections (and factories distributed through entire country, even if it doesn't make sense, so more governors will support company) . A lot of that shady influence is in their hands. That's why they (Boeing, Lockheed) preffered to do little and take extreme money - because they could. Fortunately, now there is a competition in the industry.
They clearly stole the idea from the Atari video game asteroids - it's exactly the same shape. The real deal version would have been incredibly massive to even reach LEO orbit - something like 2 or 3X the mass and size of the space shuttle with it's main tank and boosters. SSTO is incredibly wasteful and unnecessary. Why boost a giant near empty fuel tank and rocket motors you no longer need to all the way into orbit when you only need the payload to reach orbit. ? The only reason that made the SSTO idea interesting was that it could be 100% reusable by using the propulsive landing but you could probably also do that with multi-stage rockets and Multi-stage is way more efficient.
@sconiglio Yes NASA of all places, then it mysteriously on its first flight crashed on landing then of all things failed to get funds to be rebuilt. Nicely played id say.
Ever heard of the Flying bed-stand? the Apollo landing trainer? This idea is not new or original to DC-X. The whole working Setup of Space X is a thing of its own however.
@@GintaSuiseiseki musk is amazing that much is certain but you don't see the starhopper delivering payload to space didn't you ? This was only a prototype that was cancelled the next year, comparing it with falcon 9 is kinda stupid.
My cheap smart phone has more basic memory than the entire spaceship, albeit a whole different platform. If we practiced Ochmans Razor of Simple Theory/ rationale, we would so far ahead of the game (and not have Obama as commander).
nothanksgoogle (Smart phone has more ram, storage capacity than burrows and ibm mainframesApollo 9-17) As a start of debate or simple discussion, Read Ted kaczynski's (unibomber) Manifesto It's in most libraries. He basically talks about how technology is going to disappoint mankind. It's Been 8 years since I've read it the book but is insightful because we are too involved and Technology and we have to bring it to a more simple form or it's going to get out of control and we will not be able to control it. Sounds too Bazaar I realize that.
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Our team of talented wild and willy engineers at White Sands filmed this video live. I remember the day well. Good to see it posted here. I believe it was filmed with the VICS Van and several RICS data collection and video support Vans (various videos from different angles are probably archived at WSMR). We did many flights. Such fun times were had by all. Little did we realize at the time this is all we would have left for posterity sake of the Delta Clipper test program ...but the dream lives on in what Space-X and Blue-Origin are doing and have done. Best fun on Earth !
Wow! Thank you for your service
Hi. I understand that some of your team went on to join Blue Origin and the New Shepard program. I'd love to here any thoughts you may have regarding this.
If the legs had been fixed and not deployable (thus no tip-over accident), do you believe the program would have continued to full-scale?
@@zincfinger3817 i went down the list of senior people involved with this program and out of a dozen of them only one comes up on google, and hes been working for boeing as a program lead, since 1983. The rest of the senior leadership doesnt come up on google when you search their name + rockets. My guess is they aged out and retired before spacex and blue origin even came to being.
@@user-zj2mb3sp3x Thanks for that. Its interesting watching this happening in 1995. The New Shepherd ,2 decades later looks pretty disappointing.
Actually, the DC-XA "Clipper Graham" (as it was called under NASA's tenure) flew four times for NASA before the final accident. Budgets were always tight, and when it crashed, that was it. The legacy of DC-X is this inspiration of dozens of private space companies: Blue Origin, SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space, Rotary Rocket Company, XCOR Aerospace, Kistler Aerospace, Kelly AeroSpace, Pioneer RocketPlane and more. Even though many of these companies failed, at least they tried.
many failed, but some succeeded fantastically!
Different designs serve different purposes. This single stage design seems more useful to private industry (esp tourism) than to gov't.
Perhaps one day it will also become the landing pod for a large interplanetary vessel too big to land itself.
Unfortunately this program was cancelled in favor of the Lockheed VentureStar program, which failed in the mock-up stage. Even as a former Lockheed employee this was a better design and actually flew. I had the opportunity to work on the fuel tanks...very cool tech!
I didn't think that the VentureStar actually failed, I though it was killed mostly for political reasons. They wouldn't compromise on using an aluminum tank for the early prototype.
@@EvanRossPlus the aluminum lithium tank would have weighed more, eating into the payload capacity. the payload capacity was just barely enough for the mission profile to start, so losing any of that payload made the thing useless. They just needed more time. Look at composite overwrapped pressure vessels now, they're used everywhere and spaceX even made a huge one. But even spaceX dropped the giant composite tank sections because of expense and complication for reuse (sudden failure without warning)
@@user-zj2mb3sp3x I remember in one doco they talked about how at the time to new aluminum tanks they came up with ended up lighter than the composite ones. The composite ones kept failing the pressurization tests, composite just wasn't there yet at the time.
VentureStar was nearly a BILLION in NASA funds and over a third of a billion in Lockheed funds and they still didn't have a working prototype. Delta Clipper was only $100 million and had numerous prototypes and successes at the point of cancellation.
+Reticuli I worked on the A-5 engines by Pratt the whole program was 60million and only had the DCX and the DCXA vehicles. It was canceled because a airforce grunt forgot to hook up a #4 an b nut for the landing strut and it tipped over and crashed when it landed.
+phaseed phaz You're right! Simple stupidity ended the program. That and politics/funding. Of the three companies contending for the X-33 program, only ONE company had a working, flying prototype. The rest were paper unicorns designed to wow Congress in hopes to suck more tax dollars. A paper unicorn won. McDonnell Douglas was struggling for any business at the time. Not long after the X-33 decision, Boeing purchased McDonnell, and the DC-X/A became another footnote in space history.
+phaseed phaz No, it was a Douglas technician who made the error. A few years after the accident, the guy was on my project. He did a very good job for us. Once bitten, twice shy?
+Samuel “Spaceman Sam” Coniglio The Rockwell proposal was based on proven space shuttle technology. Aluminum tanks, shuttle engines, conventional hydraulic flight control actuators, etc. The winning Lockheed design used composite tanks, aerospike engine, electromechanical flight control actuators, and so on. NASA specifically indicated that they wanted all-new technology and Rockwell ignored this, so of course they lost. Lockheed won exactly because they were a 'paper unicorn', as you stated, and that's what NASA wanted. It almost worked but the failure of the composite tanks doomed the project.
+Reticuli If there was DC-XA, there would have been no SpaceX. Maybe it was a good decision?
Actually, we called this the "Death Roll" flight. No other ballistic vehicle has ever lifted from the ground, dropped its nose below the horizon, then safely landed again all under rocket power.
well... ruclips.net/video/f8W2SI4c93s/видео.html
Wild to see such an old YT comment. Blast from the past.
And then there were two...
@@dsdy1205 ^_^ it'shappening.gif
SpaceX
A program ahead of its time. Some of the things in this flight have not yet been achieved by anyone else.
SpaceX says hold my beer.
as much as I'm a SpaceX enthusiast, their self landing Falcon booster rocket doesn't have but a fraction of the precision lateral movement ability of Delta Clipper, as you can see in many of the flight tests DC-X was able to change attitude from vertical to horizontal flight and back again, also its thrusters could be used while DC-X was *hovering*, in a fashion, to move sideways across the surface toward its landing pad to touchdown. Falcon and BO landings are still pre-planned flight paths, as opposed to having ability to change direction mid-flight at just a few hundred feet altitude.
@@cheewooleong5066 i do like the DC-X but comparing it to the falcon 9 first stage is like comparing apples to oranges. Delta clipper should be compared to Starship. The falcon 9 booster is incredible in the fact it goes through reentry, uses grid fins to accurately locate a droneship in the vast ocean and then performs the landing. The landing itself is the most incredible part of the falcon 9 booster. Take note that the booster does not have enough fuel to hover, more importantly there is no thrust setting on the merlin engines that will allow it to hover. The thrust is either too low or too high. Due to all these factors the falcon 9 does something known as hoover slam. Basically its landing burn thrust is only enough to reduce the impact of landing. Yet despite that, its able to survive landing and in some cases be ready to be reused in a month's time. This is an amazing feat of engineering where the spacex engineers have been able to get the most out of their booster. Furthermore another reason you cannot compare the delta clipper to falcon 9 is that the delta clipper was never tested in orbit, it never experienced reentry. It never had to target its landing zone from beyond the karman line. If i remember correctly the delta clipper was to be a single stage to orbit vehicle yet no prototype of it ever made it to orbit. For this reason its not fair to compare it to falcon 9 first stage. One is a regular working vehicle with an observed economic impact- spacex is the worlds leading launch provider, the owner of the world's largest satellite constellation. These have all been achieved through the partially reusable falcon 9. In comparison the delta clipper is a very interesting concept that never went any further than a few suborbital flights. A spacex prototype spacecraft that you should compare the DC-X to are the starship suborbital prototypes SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11 and SN15. While the Dc-X was capable of hovering, changing from vertical to horizontal fight, the starship prototypes mentioned have shown the ability to maneuver to a landing spot using flaps while in a horizontal configuration and then reorient to a vertical configuration for a landing. The comparison of these two vehicles DC-X and Starship sub-orbital protypes makes sense since the delta clipper and starship were meant to operate in orbit. Delta clipper was never realised and we don't know how well it would have done especially during orbital reentry something we saw tested with the recent starship flight test IFT4. We saw the starship survive orbital reentry, use its flaps to direct itself to a landing sport and execute a landing flip (moving from horizontal to vertical) and ignite its engines to land softly in the ocean. However the landing was not without issues which makes me wonder how an orbital delta clipper prototype would have performed.
@@cheewooleong5066 I suppose the response to that would be that they haven't really needed that capability to hit their targets for mission/cost, so why add it? Starship will have more capability, and stoke space - who are the first company whose in development hardware makes me stop and say 'Wow, this new; I like it' since SpaceX - will probably have similar capabilities on their medium class reusable upper stage. It definitely seems like the excitement of the 1990s is back, and it looks like this time it's here to stay.
Considering the time period, this is way more impressive than Starship.
True, tho to be fair SN8 test has to relit its engine, manuevering using its flaps, much higher apogee, full scale instead of subscale (aka. it's like when they go straight to testing DC-Y/DC-1, thus skipping DC-X entirely), and producing one new vehicle each month (with constant design improvements/iterations) instead of just one vehicle for all tests
And most importantly, SpaceX done it mostly by their own funding & efforts :)
@@alvianchoiriapriliansyah9882 And I think the biggest reason DC-X is still “better” than Starship is that it had been developed much longer at this point in time. Starship has only been in development for about 1.5-2 years so far.
@@deltuhvee The current Starship iteration is about two years at this point, but they've been working on the concept for almost a decade at this point.
@@deltuhvee Starship has been in development much longer than a couple years, development starts well before you actually start to build prototypes.
I was so disappointed when this program got cancelled
I love how you can see the landing gear pop out as it approaches the ground.
comment from 7yrs ago thats relevant today with starship.
A rocket that is able to translate sideways while powered is cool to see.
Man this brings back some memories! I was TDY at WSMR during one of the test flights of the Clipper. That was some cool times!
TDY?
Mark O Yep. I was over at Bliss for a while and they were doing some temp testing on the patriot system and were were providing them coms back to bliss.
xd45shooter
Sorry, i wanted to know what TDY was an abbreviation of! :)
Mark O got ya! TDY stands for "temporary duty". So it not a permanent change of station just a temporary one.
Ah! Thanks :)
Wow, This thing is awesome. I never heard of this project. You would think this technology would have been continued. The concept reminds me of the old rocket-ships of 50s & 60s era sci-fi.
This and the X-33 were being looked at as the Future of NASA manned space flight.
X-33 ran into trouble because its "unibody" fuel tanks, which were made of composites, were cracking and leaking due to the cold temperatures of the cryo fuels.
Lockheed actually fixed that on their own Nickle! But by the time the fix was done, the Bush II people were in. X-33 was cancelled the what would become the useless SLS was chosen with re-hashed Apollo and shuttle tech. I saw on Curious Droid's RUclips page that part of the reason the X-33 was cancelled was its primary backer in the Government was Al Gore. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds petty enough to be so.
How can we not love this thing? This makes the Shuttle look primitive as hell! I wish we had a space program to use it!
Had they continued this program they would have had an orbital vehicle by the late 1990s to early 2000s.
unlikely
This is for real? It's staggering to think this piece is true. 20+ years ago? Seems too incredible.. And yet...
Yep...and Elon Musk, SpaceX...take all credit
@@hajorm.a3474 Well, theres a big difference, since the starships have the bellyflop and landing as the main subject to test, plus they try to do it as late as possible, to keep it going at terminal velocity, meanwhile the DC-X's "bellyflop" maneuver was to get to the landing pad for a touch down, no aerodynamic reasons, non of that stuff. However, the DC-X project was a great feat of aerospace and proved the concept of untethered propulsive landing.
@@danimorcos7226 I'm a complete beginner when it comes to rockets and the like, why would they want to keep terminal velocity longer? Is it to do with fuel perhaps, in my mind you'd want to gradually slow a vehicle.
@@samconroyy Yes, fuel is the reason. If you don’t absolutely need the engines, shut them off. For Starship, terminal velocity is about 100 m/s. It takes very little time to get that to zero before the landing. For example, with a modest 1 g of deceleration, it takes about 10 seconds.
In 1988 there was a project started at Grumman in oyster bay LI to build the first Nuclear powered Rocket engine and in 1995 it was completed.......The reason i know this is because my aunt worked on the project and was in joint effort with alot of defense contractors aswell as BNL who came up with the idea for using helium to regulate the reactor..
It was called the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Program
No, the only propulsion was the 4 RL10 engines, nothing else. I think the bright plume was due to a mixture ratio shift as the throttle settings changed rapidly.
I'd say groundbreaking flight, but it was a soft landing.
It was actually a very hard landing.
@@pseudotasuki That's what I get for being both flippant and ignorant. Still impressed though.
The early starship
@@chauve_ Eh it kept its engines lit the entire time of starship did the same they would’ve landed with SN9.
@@chauve_ its not a fair comparison
also don't forget the raptors are still experimental engines and the delta clipper used proven engines
@@chauve_ Its like 20 times smaler then starship.
It just shows Starship isn't "revolutionary".
Dad was the Air Force lead on this program. It killed him when it was finally canned. It bothered me a lot too. This was an amazing craft that was ahead of its time, and should have gotten a lot more attention/funding. But it didn't. It isn't dark forces so much as ignorance, bit. I can tell you 2nd hand as the son of a R&D guy that there are so many people - leaders included - in this world who don't understand technology or what of it is worth investing in. Internet's full of tubes, remember!
I am an old engineer from that era, didn't have the chance to work on DC-X but was at McD in those days. DC-X was definitely *not ahead of its time*, rather she was the right ship and was making extraordinary progress at minimum funding level, but DoD & NASA were biased toward LockMart and bought into their fairy tales instead of properly funding Delta Clipper development after the crash. It would have cost relatively little to build another ship, and I'm convinced it would have led to a fleet of orbital ships that could have been visiting ISS in less than 5 years.
Imagine the possibilities NASA squandered by walking away from DC-X, this should have been Starliner - operating for 3 decades flawlessly.
This can't be real, internet nerds have assured me that Elon Musk is the super-genius who invented this technology.
youtert not Elon but his team of specialist made this real. Btw the dcx was a slow low altitude booster. Nothing compared to the falcon who is able to vertically land from high speed and orbit altitude.
Michelle, yeah, it only took 22 years, the marvels of modern technology, 5000 overworked employees and a lot more money to do it... Then again, NASA landed on the moon 50 years ago. They even sent three electric cars up there. Then had actual people drive them around... Meanwhile, the millennials go crazy over the fact that musk put an old defunct Tesla in orbit - among the tons of other stuff from earth that is already floating around up there.
Kowalski K first the Tesla is brand new, unless few weeks for you its already old. Second, the Tesla is in deep space not orbital so it wont add to anything assuming you are talking about space debris. Finally we could had the falcon 9 technology much faster but the congress NASA and the old space club axed it in favor to the Venturestar who was just a pipe dream. Millenials are going crazy not because its spectacular, well yes maybe, but also because this has a deeper impact than a caprice of a random government. This is a private initiative its a business, and its cutting the cost and advancing technology. Less in a decade space X has been able to create never used before tecnology and its shaking the world of space. Sorry you cant see this.
Michelle, it actually was the original Roadster, from 2008. I don't think he would launch the brand new one, they probably only have a couple of test cars.
As for going crazy, Falcon Heavy can lift twice as much as it's nearest competitor, at nearly a quarter of the cost. It can do it right now, not at some unspecified time in the future, and it can land and reuse all of the stage 1 boosters, which still nobody else has done on a commercial spacecraft yet.
Not sure how you can't be excited about that. Would take 2 FH to lift the equivalent of Saturn V, at an adjusted cost of well under 20%.
elon musk is going to be revealed as the biggest con man ever
That was pretty good for 1995 technology. I really think gliders like the shuttle are more practical though. Except for other world landings.
gliders like the shuttle have so far proved less practical, in terms of both expense and safety, due mainly to their complexity (and the weight of those wings).
Not always. But don't forget this is nothing like the space shuttle. This is one intact craft, with everything, to orbit. The space shuttle rode two boosters and a ridiculously large, costly external fuel tank to space.
It worked pretty well for what it was, but did cost alot to launch and reuse
This was never going to orbit.
this small ship, no it certainly wasn't built for orbital flight, but as a demonstrator and development platform it could have led to scaled up craft in a few years that could achieve orbit and then lead to the space transport that should have replaced STS shuttle.
So people are saying this is just like Starship when its way smaller and it flips back to vertical at apogee instead of before landing, which for obvious reasons is way easier. Being vertical for the entire descent isn't the same as falling horizontally and then flipping before landing.
@@brendanariki Oh, I don't doubt that. The point is that people keep equating this to Starship and using it as ammo to diminish how advanced Starship actually is.
@@dylanm.3692 It's not advanced at all. Starship is a crappy spaceship that looks like it was modeled by a kindergartener. This is 1990s technology and performed beautifully with computers that modern computers would put a shame on this.
Amazing how well that thing could fly. Is it true that that the failure was caused by a technician forgetting to plug in a hydraulic line? If so, I don't think that was a true failure. Also, whatever happened to the X-33 - anyone remember that one? The DC-X looked better though.
As we said in the US Military, it was not GI Proof.
On further observation, the brightness appears to be caused by recirculation of the fuel-rich exhaust, possibly with particles blasted from the landing pad glowing. That IS a mighty sporty landing, typical for an optimized vertical profile with no constant-velocity phase. I figured out back in 1988 that A=1.32*V^2/S gives a linear throttle-down profile vs time, the McD-D team independently did the same.
What's S in that equation? Altitude?
Before Starship, there was the DC-X.
And the Space Shuttle which came in on a landing strip as a glider.................LOL
that looked like a pretty hard landing,
Not really -- look at the booster recovery vids of SpaceX.
It was. Among other things, the impact cracked the aeroshell, grounding the vehicle. That's why it was the final DC-X flight. It was easier to make repairs while it was being upgraded.
@@SoloPilot6 They have much larger shock absorbers. DC-X was designed for gentle touchdowns.
incredible!!! had been looking for this-so amazing hard to believe it worked and was shelved-dark forces @ work i suppose
I agree but I think it fired extra rockets at the last second to cushion the landing. The Soyuz capsule, the vehicle everybody uses to get to and from the International Space Station now that the Space Shuttle is retired, does the same thing. Right before impact it fires some rockets to slow it down.
The ginormous question that remains unanswered: is SSTO actually practical? In terms of cost, re-usability, turnaround, efficiency? Gut reaction is no now that landing first stages are thing, but I'm willing to learn...
Pete Kuhns I doubt that SSTOs are worth it. The rocket would have to be huge and couldn't get very much to orbit, plus there is a good chance that the huge rocket could be destroyed on reentry and landing, resulting in a huge loss of money.
SSTOs have the potential to be incredibly cheap compared to other types of reaching orbit.
If you are interested you should look up the skylon project. It's an SSTO spaceplane that is build arround a pretty unique engine concept which supercools and compresses atmospheric air so it can be burnt as oxidizer in a convential rocket nozzle.
In theory this allows the plane to reach speeds of mach 5.5 in the upper atmosphere before switching to liquid oxidizer to reach orbit.
The project is still in it's early stages but they did manage to create a working ground protype engine with apparently pretty promising results.
It's still a bit of a long shot but if it works it has the potential to make flights to low earth orbit almost as routinely as normal commercial ones.
SSTOs will always be inferior to a multistage design when it comes to launching from earth. But sometimes there's other considerations. 20 years ago, the shuttle was providing ample evidence that reassembling a recovered rocket was expensive- they were trying to avoid that expence by never disasembling it in the first place.
SpaceX, meanwhile, decided to figure out how to safely cut costs on refurbishment and reuse, with an extra 15 years of technoligy behind them.
Skylon (and its precursor HOTOL) is beautiful concept and i hope its engines are developed but its been around since the 80s and seems bogged down in its complexity and expense, reminiscent of the shuttle. (and might share a vulnerability, due to its similar ceramic tile heat shield)
Meanwhile, SS1 & 2, and now Stratolauch have leaped ahead, by separating the two functions (air-aspirated jet and rocket) into two simpler stages, which avoids the task of dragging all the first stage hardware into orbit (and, crucially, bringing it back). Two fully re-usable stages seems to be optimum.
@@jv-lk7bc Apparently, there's a progress on the SABRE engines!
It looks like something you would see in a 1995 cereal commercial.
@Starwing1272 Absolutely! In fact it was his concept and project.
Jesus christ. Science is science. Remember how the the Model T was an early Pontiac 6000.
Making the Starship recycle friendly 🍁
This is pretty much Starship's granddaddy.
It was New Sheppard's Daddy
Why was the DC-X built with this pyramid shape?
I guess it makes more aerodynamically predictable and keeps the conter of mass low? Pyramid shape is a very stable shape for buildings, so I guess it works for space crafts as well.
Because it was reverse engineered from the alien space ships landed in Giza. Obviously.
After two years, no serious answers…
The short answer: It was designed to reenter the atmosphere nose-first so it could steer itself far off the original flight path.
The long answer: One of the design goals for Delta Clipper was the ability to launch, fly one orbit around Earth to perform its mission, and finally land near back at the launch site. And if that wasn't already enough of a challenge, it would need to do it from a polar orbit. That is, an orbit that passes near the Earth's poles rather than just the equator.
Specifically, that means launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, flying South over the Pacific ocean, passing over Antarctica, the Indian Ocean, then Asia (including the USSR), the Arctic Ocean and finally back to… whoops, Vandenberg isn't there any more! Even with a perfectly circular orbit, the planet is spinning, so now the landing pad is way off to the East. This is a much bigger problem for polar orbits since that takes a spacecraft the furthest from its launch site after one orbit. If you launched at the Equator directly East or West, you'd pass directly over the launch site on *every* orbit, that would be no good for spying since you'd only be able to see things that are near the Equator.
The solution to this problem is to build a vehicle with a high cross-range capability; the ability to make large course corrections during reentry. Delta Clipper would hurtle through the thin upper atmosphere at hypersonic speeds with its nose pointed just a bit to the left, generating enough aerodynamic lift to pull it to the east and eventually catch up to Vandenberg. The test in this video was directly related to this, as it demonstrated the maneuver the vehicle would have to perform once it reached the launch site and had to flip around to perform the landing.
On a side note: This is also generally believed to be the reason for the Space Shuttle Orbiters' massive delta wings. Their size and shape gave it the ability to generate lift while it was still extremely high in the atmosphere, was never needed for any of the flown missions. The USAF had been planning to build their own Space Shuttle fleet, and even built a launch site at Vandenberg, but eventually cancelled the entire program following the Challenger Disaster.
The lifting body concept.
where to buy?
#2 - So what's the lesson to take from this? EDUCATE people! Spread the word! If you care about the sky and the space above us, if you think that our species needs to advance upwards and outwards, then let people KNOW that opinion! And don't disdain them when they disagree - CONVINCE them you have a point instead, and that things like this are IMPORTANT! Cheap access to space! Development OF it! And eventual expansion to other planets! Change starts with us, the people - our culture, our future!
Nope. It was just a "small" government project that couldn't find a home. Started with SDIO, then when it became BMDO they dropped it. My friends at the Space Frontier Foundation lobbied hard to find a new sponsor. Project moved to DARPA briefly, then to... NASA of all places!
Did this have enough fuel to actually get into orbit ?
No.
It was designed to be suborbital, like its descendant the New Shepard, which Blue Origin hired some of the DC-X's engineers to build.
Single stage to orbit is impractical (payload would be miniscule at best) mainly because of the much higher speeds necessary.
I had not heard Aldrin but I know Conrad was. He did some of the flying.
Endless number of trolls saying its CGI.
I hope they stand on the launch pad of these rockets to make them see how much "CGI" they're using.
COOL !
how could they scrap this idea- looook at that thing!
Who's here after SN8 bellyflopped?
oh i am here after the first successful landing pal.
what happened? why was this discontinued? :/ This was 1995 -_-
As with so many things, the funding was cut. :-(
CharlesP2009
Actually the reason this program was cancelled was because the test vehicle crashed and exploded on its final flight in 1996.
*****
Yes, it was indeed a minor malfunction that led to catastrophe, and the loss of the vehicle and the program. A safing pin had been left in one of the four landing gear so it could not extend. The problem was that the DC-XA had the capability to have aborted its landing by ramping up the engines and firing back upward to burn off the excess fuel, then a parachute system would have deployed to bring it back down. After landing it almost certainly would have still toppled over, but with all fuel gone, it might not have exploded, and only minor repairs to the outer shell could have been easily made and the vehicle returned to the test program.
I was there for an earlier flight which had a blow out of the skin before the vehicle left the pad, yet it flew a good flight and landed safely. New skin was put on and away she went.
*****
Glad to help out. The Delta Clipper project was a wonderful one to have the opportunity to witness. If you see a video of a launch and listen to the commentary as the flight progresses, that is the voice of Pete Conrad, who also happened to land on the Moon on Apollo 12. He, and everyone else on this program were truly dedicated to getting human beings off this planet, and it is extremely sad that Pete is gone now, as is another who was instrumental in getting DC-X/DC-XA off the pad. His name was Bill Gaubatz, and he passed away this past summer. I was thinking of doing a book on the DCX as a follow-up to the one I did on the X-15, but after Bill's passing the heart went out of the idea.
@ Michelle Evans I hope you do that book. I can't think of a better way to honor them, and I'm sure they would have loved it for its positive addition to their life's work.
..and, now that others have taken up the idea and some of the engineering, its never been more relevant. the story should be told.
@johnsmdm perhaps so but, the idea is fantastic & flies as is. A better mouse-trap is all ways possible.
Is the video edited at 2:18?
+Andres Guzman I was wondering that too, but I think it isn't. The rocket just suddenly cuts out, and so all of the bright orange light lighting up the smoke suddenly goes away.
Tfoot sent me
To look at a a single flight prototype that has not delivered a single gram of cargo to space.
@@GintaSuiseiseki merely stating that I didn't know about the project until I saw it on one of his videos
You're thinking of Apollo's 12's Pete Conrad, not Buzz Aldrin.
Anyone interested in this VTVL tech should google Space X's Grasshopper program. Space X is coming on fast with the goal that all stages might one day be reusable.
Christopher Miles we are getting there =)
Aaaannnd Falcon Heavy :D
Maybe it just throttled up. I admit I don't know much about this ship and was just going off what I knew about Soyuz.
Since you are in R&D I am sure you have run into "not thought of here" syndrome before right? NASA did not like this outsider project one bit. Then it was working! Of the sin o fof somethign working that NASA said could not! And on measly 60 mil budget to boot? So NASA is the "dark forces" that starved the funding, put in Russian built tanks with weld cracking issues, oh and a hydro line just happened to come loose too on the first flight under full NASA control. Seems pretty dark to me. :(
Funny in those days Space was UP not SIDEWAYS like ellonia's fireworks
This comment aged like milk.
What does this even mean?
Imagine what our space program would have been like if they didnt axed it. Instead they for the venturestar that was just a over prized power point presentation. Thank you Elon for kicking old space in the nuts
Michelle Jewell Elon is just using old technology and soaking up that free govt $$. Biggest welfare queen of the century.
Is it just me or did the spacecraft approach the landing site too fast?
+geerenmo Like SpaceX's Falcon 9, I'm assuming the DC-X did not have the ability to throttle down to a point where it could slowly hover to the ground. Instead, the engines fire at much higher thrusts, rapidly decelerating until the vehicle reaches a velocity of 0km/s right above the surface, and then instantly cutting engines so they do not begin gaining altitude again. I think SpaceX calls it a "hoverslam".
Daniel Bradley But focus on the landing, it's nothing like the Falcon 9 landing... This one lands so fast you would think that it would crash.
+geerenmo It's a suicide burn. You know how much thrust you're capable of generating, how fast you are accelerating or maintaining, so you know how long to burn the engines at full throttle to reduce your velocity to zero. It's fuel-efficient and easier than gradually decelerating.
Merlin 1D can throttle down to 40%, but there are 9 and they can shut down all but 3 or 1. The DC-X had four RL10A5 that could go down to 30%. I think they needed to land on all four though, so perhaps the mass to minimum thrust ratio was less favorable and required more of a suicide burn than F9? Not sure, looks pretty abrupt though.
@@geerenmo if maybe you think that the video is not speed corrected...
never seen before
McDonnell-Douglas didn't have a salesman like Elon Musk!
Chinmay C Such "too big to fail companies" have lobbyists in the Washington and solid connections (and factories distributed through entire country, even if it doesn't make sense, so more governors will support company) . A lot of that shady influence is in their hands. That's why they (Boeing, Lockheed) preffered to do little and take extreme money - because they could. Fortunately, now there is a competition in the industry.
They clearly stole the idea from the Atari video game asteroids - it's exactly the same shape.
The real deal version would have been incredibly massive to even reach LEO orbit - something like 2 or 3X the mass and size of the space shuttle with it's main tank and boosters.
SSTO is incredibly wasteful and unnecessary. Why boost a giant near empty fuel tank and rocket motors you no longer need to all the way into orbit when you only need the payload to reach orbit. ?
The only reason that made the SSTO idea interesting was that it could be 100% reusable by using the propulsive landing but you could probably also do that with multi-stage rockets and Multi-stage is way more efficient.
the CGI is rather obvious here
@sconiglio Yes NASA of all places, then it mysteriously on its first flight crashed on landing then of all things failed to get funds to be rebuilt.
Nicely played id say.
2008-1995=13
2023-2008=15
Its like Concorde's nose 🤣
SOON Sn8 will do this!
It didn't. Neither did 9.
@@jocramkrispy305 10 did
@@daft9816 Not without blowing up afterwards.... ah well, here's to SN11
@@jocramkrispy305 oof.
@@brokensoap1717 SN15?
What could have been
So space X wasn’t first ?! WHAT THE FUCK
Ever heard of the Flying bed-stand? the Apollo landing trainer? This idea is not new or original to DC-X. The whole working Setup of Space X is a thing of its own however.
@bitpart2 most likely id say.
Does Musk know you took a time machine into the future and stole his idea?
SpaceX has nothing compared to this.
@@cmwgfo2024 starship is a joke
That statement doesn't hold very well anymore. Not that it did 2 months ago, anyway. :D
@@dylanm.3692 Starship is still a joke. 20 years and not a single rocket on Mars yet. 3 years record.
Elon got his idea from yea.
UP
👍
yeah,elon finally did it....oh,wait.
Elon can't do shit. He is a complete and utter fraud.
and..I thought Space-X was the first ones to do that with a rocket
Well and how much times did DC-X fly? how many times it delivered cargo to space? How many times it landed back on ground and flew again?
@@GintaSuiseiseki musk is amazing that much is certain but you don't see the starhopper delivering payload to space didn't you ? This was only a prototype that was cancelled the next year, comparing it with falcon 9 is kinda stupid.
Huh, what is old is new again....
Flying covid mask
Wow another thing Elon Musk didn't invent but claims as the product of his genius!
And what exactly is common to Spacex falcons in this prototype? Please list.
@@GintaSuiseiseki no
@@Fluxquark So you just made a baseless claim since you can not answer a simple question related to it. ok.
@@GintaSuiseiseki Hope he sees this bro
Imagine comparing the swan dive to starship's landing flip 🤡. This shows the kind of people who watch and believe tf's crap
this did not age well...
crazy to see people riding elon musk so hard when engineers were doing whatever he is doing now ages ago
because that doesnt look fake or anything when it lands...lol
My cheap smart phone has more basic memory than the entire spaceship, albeit a whole different platform. If we practiced Ochmans Razor of Simple Theory/ rationale, we would so far ahead of the game (and not have Obama as commander).
Explain?
nothanksgoogle (Smart phone has more ram, storage capacity than burrows and ibm mainframesApollo 9-17) As a start of debate or simple discussion,
Read Ted kaczynski's (unibomber) Manifesto It's in most libraries. He basically talks about how technology is going to disappoint mankind. It's Been 8 years since I've read it the book but is insightful because we are too involved and Technology and we have to bring it to a more simple form or it's going to get out of control and we will not be able to control it. Sounds too Bazaar I realize that.