Dyna-Soar - Robert Godwin

It was a Space Shuttle with a mission -- to drop a weapon payload anywhere on Earth and to do so while approaching its target at hypersonic velocity -- 18,000 miles per hour. Between 1957 and 1963 the Dyna-Soar programme consumed 430 million dollars of the US taxpayer's money. However, it never flew. Cancelled less than two weeks after President Kennedy's assassination, the Dyna-Soar (or X-20) was consigned to oblivion by the stroke of a pen. Today, much of the research and technology acquired during the Dyna-Soar programme is still valid. Much of it went into the Space Shuttle and some is still being used as background for the various vehicles on the drawing boards. The story of Dyna-Soar is one of the great 'what-ifs' of American aerospace history. If it had been through to completion it might have seen service as a weapon, a shuttle, a life-boat for the space station, a tourist vehicle, or in its proposed advanced versions even a conveyance for regular trips to the moon base. For the first time this book compiles many of the critical government documents that tell the story of America's extraordinary lost opportunity. Includes DVD.