Someone named Chris Bergin attempts to tell the disappointing true tale of the X-33/VentureStar - What really happened.

And gets a good bit of it right, surprisingly.

My favorite bit:

A five foot long tank was built and tested at NASA Lewis (now NASA Glenn), but the larger structure for the X-33 was going to be a step too far. Skunk Works' designers of the LH2 tank had heard from engineers that storing liquid hydrogen in a pressurized composite (notably material IM7/997-2) tank with the hollow honeycomb walls was simply doomed to failure - but their advice was ignored.

Heh. I wonder who those engineers might have been...?

There's still plenty of not-quite-accurate "official version" stuff here, though he does seem to have talked to some program insiders since he gets a few of the lesser-known aspects correct. Someday, someone will write the True Inside Account of the X-33 program -- it'll make for some amusing (and perhaps instructive) reading.

Posted by T.L. James on January 10, 2006 10:02 PM