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" What do you do when NASA pulls the funding for the ambitious, autonomous, experimental space plane you&amp;#039;re developing? If you&amp;#039;re Boeing, you build it and fly it. That was the fate for the X-37 Approach and Landing Test Vehicle (ALTV) autonomous space plane, which flew for the first time late last week in a test flight organized not by NASA, but by the Pentagon&amp;#039;s DARPA office. The flight was a huge success, right up to the point where the robot plane rolled off the Edward&amp;#039;s runway and damaged its nose gear. After NASA pulled out of the project, it looked as though the X-37 -- which was designed to achieve orbit, carry out 21 days of experiments and then re-enter and land on a runway -- was destined to remain an aerospace footnote. But with the project fairly well along in design, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) picked up the tab, allowing Boeing to complete a prototype. (Before NASA threw a huge CEV shaped wrench in spacecraft design, the X-37 was widely cited as the inspiration for just about every modern space plane design, including Lockheed Martin&amp;#039;s short-lived lifting body CEV design.)The Mother Ship Connection But the story gets better: In order to test fly the robotic vehicle, Boeing needed something to carry the plane to altitude (in this case, 37,000 feet). Enter the White Knight, the same bulbous, Scaled Composites turbojet that carried SpaceShipOne to launching altitude. Big Space meets Boutique Carrier? It certainly sounds like it. According to Space.com, despite the NASA logo the X-37 wore during the test flight, the space agency had a very limited role, acting only as a technical consultant for the flight.  Now that NASA is focusing on interplanetary manned spaceflight, I&amp;#039;d say we can expect to see more private interests to get in the LEO game. --Benjamin Chertoff Many, many more photos at Alan Radecki&amp;#039;s Mojave Airport photoblog. The X-37, carried by White Knight on an earlier test flight.  Photo by Alan Radecki, MojaveWest Photograpy.  An artist&amp;#039;s conception of the X-37 in orbit.  Courtesy Boeing Company.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a3279/2603531/>