The Bantam program received $20 million to continue design studies awarded last fiscal year to four space businesses. Bantam aims to build and eventually fly two $40 million prototype small launch vehicles of entirely new design, and eventually select one for commercial development by industry. The launcher, which can be either expendable or reusable, must provide a ride to orbit for a small payload for under $1.5 million in total cost, a major reduction in today's launch prices.

But one project that didn't get any money was the proposed "Future X" advanced space transportation program, pitched as a possible dedicated "new start" for FY98. NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin proposed Future X earlier this year as part of NASA's ongoing advanced space transportation research conducted out of the Marshall Spaceflight Center near Huntsville, Ala.

While Goldin's FY98 budget had already been submitted when the project was announced late last winter, and thus contained no new money identified for Future X, Congressional planners were hoping to insert specific money earmarked for the program within the space agency's space transportation research accounts. That didn't happen, however. Even a few million would have been enough to begin trade studies and other research aimed at development of a new, more radical single stage space vehicle prototype than the X-33 now under development. The X-33 project, as well as the smaller X-34 test program, is believed to have both been fully funded in the budget recommended by the joint House-Senate committee. Such a committee is always formed when the House and Senate pass budget proposals that differ, as was the case this year with the NASA dollars.

Future X is identified as a potential launch vehicle that would use technology not now on the drawing boards to achieve operational space launch well into the 21st century. As described earlier in the year, first test flights in the program wouldn't begin until the X-33 system has become operational, and a working version of the Future X craft wouldn't come on line to space users until after the second decade of the 21st century.

If any work is done towards Future X during the '98 fiscal year, it will have to come from the space agency's existing budget for transportation research. With those dollars already stretched to the limit, that prospect appears unlikely.