The promoters of the X-38 claimed that X-23 and X-24 between them had proven the SV-5 shape at all Mach numbers, so they could use it without any expensive wind tunnel and flight tests. I don't know if they really believed the myth or were just low-balling the cost to lure NASA into funding the program. In reality they designed two completely new shapes for X-38 and put them through an interminable series of B-52 drop tests that tripled the cost of the program by the time it was cancelled.
On April 19, 1967, a spacecraft that looked somewhat like a fat, winged dart reentered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. As it dipped into the upper reaches of the ionosphere it began to glow and was surrounded by a fiery plasma. But rather than traveling in a straight line as most reentering spacecraft did, the glowing craft began banking at hypersonic speeds, finally slowing and deploying a parachute at a point more than 1,100 kilometers off its orbital path. A JC-130 aircraft grabbed its parachute lines high above the Pacific and the crew winched it inside. The experimental spacecraft, known as the X-23 PRIME, was not a classified project. According to the US Air Force, it was intended to test the ability of a spacecraft to travel crossrange from its entry orbit, something that many years later would be incorporated into the design of NASA’s space shuttle.
Some materials on ASSET, which was contemporaneous with PRIME. It was also an experimental hypersonic reentry vehicle.
Just a question. Since Kodak was in Rochester, N.Y, and since the objective was to get the pictures as fast as possible, I suppose that the lifting body would have landed at a military base close from Rochester ? It sounds logical, in order to minimize transit time by road or by air, plus I suppose the NRO would be quite nervous about USSR very high-res picture travelling across the U.S countryside, even under cover. So I wonder, was there an Air Force base near Rochester where the lifting body could have quietly and discretely landed ? just asking...