Old X-34's Are Rotting In Some Guy's Back Yard
The Tragic Tale Of How NASA’s X-34 Space Planes Ended Up Rotting In Someone’s Backyard, TheWarZone
“The X-34 story took a very bizarre turn in the last couple of years when the Air Force apparently donated the craft to a museum in Florida. The man who was the point of contact for the museum had to take possession of them, but was not anywhere near ready logistically to move them across the country. This would have been a major administrative and operational undertaking as each state would require special permits to move the wide loads through. We can only imagine what the bill would be to ship the rocket planes 2,000 miles east would have been, but it would have been substantial. This is how they ended up in the back yard of the proprietor of Smith’s Quickcrane Inc.”
Maybe they could find a museum that is located closer to display them.
X-34 left a lot of room for institutional embarrassment.
Yes, this reminds me of the DC-X they just disposed of after the accident. Remember it was a DoD Project first.
I find it rather odd that the Air Force would donate them to a museum in Florida instead of their own National Museum of the Air Force. But then again it looks like the X-34 was a NASA program so why did the AF donate them instead of NASA?
Not actually knowing the facts I’d suggest that a commitment to perpetual maintenance, as well as display stipulations, would play a role.
That’s actually quite possible. The Air Force Museum has had problems with preservation and storage. For long periods, valuable parts of their collection were left outside and exposed to the elements, because they didn’t have any place indoors to put them. That’s improved, but as recently as 2010 (when the X-34 would have been sent off to a museum) that might still have been an issue. Either that, or it would have been a recent enough embarrassment to be remembered, and the Museum would probably have been sensitive to where they’d put the X-34.
But I am surprised they gave it to someone else the way they did. I would have thought some letters of commitment and proof of available funding would have been required. I would not expect them to give it away to just anyone, based on a “trust me” about long-term preservation.
From what I read the X-34 was a NASA program and just stored on AF property. So maybe that has something do do with.
The museum has expanded greatly over the last 20 years or so. It’s a 15 minute drive from my home and I go there a couple of time a year. If you ever visit I recommend you go on the behind the scene tour where you get to see the restoration area and parts of aircraft in storage.
I’ve only been there twice. The second time, I was very impressed by the improvements since my first visit around 1990. I was just pointing out that they, more than many other museums, have the experience to be careful about collecting more things than they have the resources to preserve. (And I’m not implying other museums are careless, just that people learn best from their own mistakes.)
You’d think that of all the experimental and one off aircraft, spacecraft and other vehicles built by the United States, the tiny subset of them that are bestowed an “X-Plane” designation would be all worth keeping in a hangar somewhere as historic objects. It’s not like the X-34 was some random F-5E with a modified vertical stabilizer to test something. It’s not like they’re terribly big either.
It’s sure going to be grand when the B-2s are chopped to bits and buried in the middle of the desert, rather than stored in a secured hangar with *gasp* air conditioning for 30 years until they can safely be put in museums without divulging secrets.
Same goes for the F-117.
Our historic aerospace and naval heritage is far poorer because so many ships and aircraft from the first half of the 20th century were scrapped rather than have some copies (hell, a copy) of them preserved.
The one and only (surviving, after the other crashed) XB-70 Valkyrie spent years sitting out in the rain at the Air Force Museum. Possibly decades, I’d have to check. And it was considered the pride of their collection.