Mar 12 1998
From The Space Library
The X-38 atmospheric vehicle completed its first unpiloted test flight successfully. Project Manager John F. Muratore commented that the successful test was "the culmination of two years of hard work by a team from the Johnson Space Center and the Dryden Flight Research Center."
NASA had created the X-38, which could hold up to seven passengers, as an escape vehicle for the International Space Station (ISS). Described as a "whale-shaped, wingless vehicle with fins that look as if they were inspired by a 1956 Cadillac," the X-38 was the first new spacecraft in more than 20 years to reach the flight-testing stage. Engineers had designed a fully automated craft, "so that even badly injured crew members could climb in, [the vehicle would] separate from the station, and the vehicle would then serve as an ambulance, using satellite-based navigation aids" to carry passengers directly back to a designated landing field on Earth.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin publicly acknowledged for the first time that the ISS would cost more than originally proposed, with a revised cost of US$21.3 billion, and would take longer to assemble than was initially planned, with a revised completion date of December 2003. Since 1993, NASA had consistently reported that the cost of the ISS would be US$17.4 billion, and had targeted a 2002 completion date. The revised cost was 200 percent more than the original US$8 billion estimate in President Ronald Reagan's 1984 proposal.
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