A Rocketdyne-Aerojet-Pratt & Whitney venture dubbed the Rocket Based Combined Cycle Consortium has won an initial $16.6 million contract from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to start developing a new rocket engine that could power a Space Shuttle replacement. The Integrated System Test of an Air-breathing Rocket (ISTAR) may lead to a $123.4 million Phase 2, involving ground testing in 2006 of an engine that could power an X-43C hypersonic testbed before 2010. ISTAR would accelerate the 4.2m- (14ft-) wide, 9m-long NASA Langley Research Centre X-43C from the ground to Mach 6.
Source: Flight International