Scott Lowther is now selling a kit for the DC-X.

maybe space island group will make dc-x reality. does anyone know when they launch.

"...although McDonnell Douglas engineers are rumored to be attempting to resurrect the project in the private sector."

Could that be a refernce to Blue Origin? Or something I haven't heard about?

And in any case, when was there ever a DC-X'B?'

"...although McDonnell Douglas engineers are rumored to be attempting to resurrect the project in the private sector."

Could that be a reference to Blue Origin? Or some effort I haven't heard about?

And in any case, when was there ever a DC-X'B'?

Could that be a refernce to Blue Origin? Or something I haven't heard about?

Sounds like an out-of-date reference to what Pete Conrad and Bill Gaubatz were doing at United Space Lines.

I remember building kits of the Mercury, Gemini (60s) and Apollo (70s) vehicles. Then the Shuttle (80s). What we get in 2010 is a hobby rocket experiment that didn't even get into space, let alone orbit. A bast*rd project, which was put together to use up surplus SDI funds. It's still our most recent sucessful "space" project because, unlike NASP or X-33, hardware was actually build and flew.

It is to weep.

As someone who had a small hand in the DC-X project, I take exception at the assumption that is was "put together to use up SDI funds." It was not. The struggles just to acquire funds for it should have been in Harry Stine's book but would have made it too long and depressing.
Without the DC-X, there would probably be no NewSpace companies. Certainly not as many, and certainly we would not be as far along as we are. And yes we are far along. Just because you don't see 100 rocket ships flying right now doesn't mean that they are not being worked on and built. The next three or four years will bring some interesting vehicles out of hangars and into the sky.

Living in Stine country (Phx) I had (damaged in a move by water) an autographed copy of his book which for the first time made me suspect that SSTO was do-able and got the sense from his book that the biggest mistake of the DC-X program was not doing it to full scale right off (because a scale model gave an opportunity to kill off the project where a full scale model could not have been.) The scale model allowed nay-sayers to say it wouldn't scale up, but the engineers say it would. I wonder if the scale model itself would work as a lunar to lunar orbit shuttle?

Exciting to be able to add to a collection but at $65 dollars for 37 pieces of plastic, seems kind of steep for the memories.

space island group said that inteded to launch the dc-x "delta clippler" either this year or next. I have not seen any progress so far.

"$65 dollars for 37 pieces of plastic..."

Sadly, that's the basic economics of a "garage kit." More than a man-week was spent on making the original master parts (more like two, I believe), and each kit is virtually cast by hand. Sadly, it is not really reasonable to expect sales to reach 200... 200 sales would be a fairly astounding result, to be honest. So, given perhaps a half-hour per unit or so worth of labor for one guy, then another guy doing all the marketting and shipping and postage and buying decals and such, and amortising the initial cost of the propduction of the master parts... it's often surprising how *low* these prices are. If a regualr injection kit comapny had produced the DC-X, I seriously doubt it'd sell for less than $20. So, two to three times the cost of an injection molded styrene kit for a very low production run, nearly hand-made kit... doing pretty good.

One could, if one was so inclined, point out some possible similarities between this and rocketry...