NASA X-33 space plane program

Tom cites the $1.3 billion X-33 space plane program — given to Lockheed Martin Skunk Works on a 30-month design-through-test-flight schedule as a flagship of post-Gulf-War rapid-prototyping ambition — as a definitive failure of the rapid-prototyping doctrine. "We didn't have the ability to do it in thirty months."

One of the things that came out of that was ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, started a whole major program on rapid prototyping — how you could conceive, design, and develop something and get it to market in a very short period of time. One of the great failures of those types of programs was NASA tried to develop the X-33 space plane on a thirty-month schedule, from design through fabrication to test flight. The whole $1.3 billion program was a flop, because we didn't have the ability to do it in thirty months. They gave it to the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, and they ran into some problems. You don't have a lot of time. If everything goes well, you might be able to do it, but not everything goes well in research.