The X-38 Crew Return Vehicle was a joint NASA-ESA effort as part of the International Space Station program to produce a lifeboat for the station. It was to remain semi-permanently berthed at ISS, only leaving either during an evacuation or occasional vehicle swaps, and would have the capability to evacuate the entire 6-person crew. Being a spaceplane, it also offered lower g-loading than Soyuz, important to reduce risk to potentially ill or injured crewmembers.
A small expendable Deorbit Propulsion System module would perform the deorbit maneuver before being jettisoned. After a gliding reentry, the spaceplane would deploy a parafoil and make a controlled land-landing in the desert. The vehicle could then be refurbished for subsequent flights. Launch and delivery to ISS would be performed by the Space Shuttle, though considerations were also made for launch aboard Ariane 5 or other rockets, mainly requiring the addition of an actual service module to allow independent rendezvous and capture.
Several derivatives were also considered, for missions including crew and cargo delivery, and freeflying scientific missions
Two aerodynamic test articles were built and used for a series of drop tests. The first orbital vehicle was also largely built, and preparations started for its orbital test flight, but the program was canceled in 2002 due to ISS cost overruns
All materials and textures are packed into the .blend file. Unapplied modifiers and instancing have been used to reduce file size and enable easy editing.
Recommended for use with my International Space Station model: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/space/spaceship/international-space-station-551a468e-fa18-4d9a-b7dc-6ae2ac022aa1
Changelog:
Aug 26 2022: Initial uploadMay 25 2023: Added STL files for 3d printing
BLEND (Blender, filesize: 11.3 MB), OBJ (OBJ, filesize: 12.2 MB), FBX (Autodesk FBX, filesize: 6.26 MB), GLTF (glTF, filesize: 8.81 MB), STL (Stereolithography, filesize: 7.58 MB)
