The Boeing X-20 program or DynaSoar started out as a follow on to the X-15 program from North American Aviation. It was to go higher, faster and farther than the X-15. Many of its pilots were from the X-15 project. But as the space age came along hard and fast with astronauts in orbital flights missions, the X-20 mission went from a sub orbiting glider to orbital 3 day spacecraft. One pilot to a three man vehicle. For awhile the Dynasoar tried to cope until The secretary of Defence pulled the plug in 1963. No manned space vehicles flew with wings for almost 18 years.

Robert Godwin has produced a beautiful and before now unseen look at how this project evolved. Many of his illistrations have never been seen before now. This book examines the many different concepts, designs and boosters over its nearly 15 year lifespan. The DVD alone is worth the price of the book.
An outstanding book at a great price.

If you had asked someone from the aerospace industry in the late fifties how they thought that manned spaceflight would evolve, it's likely that they would have described something like the X-20 Dyna-Soar program. It was the logical next step beyond the X-planes of the 1946 - 1968 period, extending their performance out to orbital speeds and altitudes as part of an incremental military development program. Under other circumstances, it might have happened just like that.

Instead, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, and turned spaceflight into one of the principal `fronts' of the Cold War. Under these conditions, there wasn't time for the measured development that the X-20 program would have called for - Instead, a ballistic approach using existing missiles was used, to get things done quickly. Also, President Eisenhower decided that the primary thrust of the American manned space program would be civilian, through the agency of NASA.

The X-20 program wasn't immediately cancelled, as a parallel military space program continued, which the X-20 would have been the flagship of. Ongoing questions about exactly what the program was intended to accomplish eventually undermined the program with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who finally cancelled Dyna-Soar in favour of the Air Force "Blue Gemini" and "Manned Orbiting Laboratory" projects, which were themselves cancelled a few years later.

Until now, the X-20 program has been pretty obscure, without a lot of published information available. This volume addresses that need. Like many of the releases from Apogee books, this isn't specifically a history of the program - rather, it is a collection of rare documents relating the program, along with a DVD of rare film on the program. If you already know some history of the X-20 program, and want to know more, then this is for you -- like a trip to the archives!

This book is a natural for me - I'm both a space enthusiast, and an aviation buff with an interest in the X-planes of the 1946 - 1968 period. So it gets me on both fronts.