This document presents an assessment of the potential environmental consequences of the development and subsequent validation of the single stage rocket technology (SSRT) using a subscale vehicle that is capable of vertical takeoff and landing. Findings from the assessment determined no significant impact will result from conducting the SSRT program.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations implementing NEPA (40 CFR Parts 1500- 1508), and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 6050.1 direct that decision-makers take into account environmental consequences when authorizing or approving major federal actions. This environmental assessment (EA) evaluates the environmental consequences of conducting activities for the SSRT test program. The purpose of the proposed action is to provide SDIO with a suborbital, recoverable rocket (SRR) capable of lifting up to 3,000 pounds of payload to an altitude of 1.5 million feet; returning to the launch site for a precise soft landing; with the capability to launch for another mission within three to seven days. To support these requirements, the proposed action involves validation and testing of a DC-X vehicle. Component assembly of the vehicle will take place at Scaled Composites, Inc., Mojave, CA; Chicago Bridge and Iron, Cordova, AL; Pratt and Whitney, West Palm Beach, FL, Aerojet, Sacramento, CA; and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company, Beach, CA. Static test firing activities will occur at NASA/White Sands Test Facility Huntington (WSTF), WSMR, New Mexico, and launch activities will occur at White Sands Space Harbor (WSSH), WSMR, New Mexico. No significant impacts are anticipated to the environment at the engineering contractor facilities, NASA/WSTF, or WSSH.

Winner of the Michael C. Robinson Prize for Historical Analysis given by the National Council on Public History While the glories and tragedies of the space shuttle make headlines and move the nation, the story of the shuttle forms an inseparabe part of a lesser-known but no less important drama—the search for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket. Here an award-winning student of space science, Andrew J. Butrica, examines the long and tangled history of this ambitious concept, from it first glimmerings in the 1920s, when technicians dismissed it as unfeasible, to its highly expensive heyday in the midst of the Cold War, when conservative-backed government programs struggled to produce an operational flight vehicle. Butrica finds a blending of far-sighted engineering and heavy-handed politics. To the first and oldest idea—that of the reusable rocket-powered single-stage-to-orbit vehicle—planners who belonged to what President Eisenhower referred to as the military-industrial complex.added experimental ("X"), "aircraft-like" capabilties and, eventually, a "faster, cheaper, smaller" managerial approach. Single Stage to Orbit traces the interplay of technology, corporate interest, and politics, a combination that well served the conservative space agenda and ultimately triumphed—not in the realization of inexpensive, reliable space transport—but in a vision of space militarization and commercialization that would appear settled United States policy in the early twenty-first century.

The key to opening the use of space to private enterprise and to broader public uses lies in reducing the cost of the transportation to space. More routine, affordable access to space will entail aircraft-like quick turnaround and reliable operations. Currently, the space Shuttle is the only reusable launch vehicle, and even parts of it are expendable while other parts require frequent and extensive refurbishment. NASA's highest priority new activity, the Reusable Launch Vehicle program, is directed toward developing technologies to enable a new generation of space launchers, perhaps but not necessarily with single stage to orbit capability. This book assesses whether the technology development, test and analysis programs in propulsion and materials-related technologies are properly constituted to provide the information required to support a December 1996 decision to build the X-33, a technology demonstrator vehicle; and suggest, as appropriate, necessary changes in these programs to ensure that they will support vehicle feasibility goals.