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The National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program has a wide range of technical challenges associated with it. In the process of finding solutions to these unknowns, NASP has enabled advancements across a broad scope of technologies. This state-of-the-art work is being performed by 5 major aerospace companies (General Dynamics, McDonnell-Douglas, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell International, and Rocketdyne), over 500 subcontractors (including universities) and 15 major U.S. government research laboratories. This variety of affected technologies and large extent of interaction with national organizations are building an important foundation for U.S. technological preeminence in the international aerospace marketplace. The more concrete, longer-term benefits include both low cost, flexible access to space (i.e. Earth orbit) and possibilities for military and civil hypersonic aircraft.

Numerous articles have described the goals, management structure, and technical accomplishments of the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program. This paper describes how the technology from NASP may enable new operational vehicle concepts; presents the impact of hydrogen fuel on hypersonic transport designs; and for the space transportation role, describes a first generation hydrogen fueled operational vehicle. A national space launch architecture is presented which reflects the requirements of military, civil, and commercial users. The ability of existing and planned systems to satisfy space launch requirements are compared with architectures involving NASP Derived Vehicles (NDVs). Unique operational capabilities are explained, and the ability of NDV's to “normalize” space access is also presented. The operations, support, and launch infrastructure necessary to support such a vehicle is described.