ballistic cargo vehicle for the H-2 launcher, and much less expensive that the estimated US$2.9 billion needed to complete the full-sized HOPE. Even the small HOPE-X launched on unmodified H-2A rockets would deliver a useful to ISS, about the same as the Progress spacecraft's approximate . HOPE-X was about long with a wingspan. Project conclusion In 1998, the H-2 suffered from a string of failures. A re-evaluation of the entire space program followed, and budget constraints later forced a reduction in overall funding by US$690 million to US$4.22 billion for the five-year spending period between 1998 and 2002. This would force a delay in the timeline for the HOPE-X, with its first flight in 2003. By this time NASDA had spent only US$305 million since the project was approved in 1988, reflecting the status as a research project. The next year the H-2 project was cancelled outright, proceeding with the simplified and lighter H-2A alone. Hughes pulled out of the H-2A project at about this time; they had initially purchased ten launches on the system and it was considered a major international success for NASDA. HOPE continued to soldier on. In 2000, an agreement was signed to land the returning vehicle at Aeon Airstrip on Christmas Island in Kiribati. The High Speed Flight Demonstration project consisted of 25% scale models of HOPE-X to test navigation technologies and flight characteristics. As the 2003 deadline approached a number of debates broke out about the launcher profile, with many arguing that the H-2 should be replaced with a jet-powered cargo aircraft for an air-start. The first flight was pushed back further to 2004. Before this milestone was reached a major re-organization of NASDA took place in order to address its obvious overcommitment in light of Japan's economic stagnation, especially now that there were demands for a crash program to develop spy satellites in order to track North Korean nuclear efforts. JAXA was formed, and HOPE was cancelled in 2003. See also Buran (spacecraft) EADS Phoenix - successor to the cancelled Hermes program that was a contemporary of HOPE. Fuji (Spacecraft) H-II Transfer Vehicle Space Shuttle program RLV-TD - an Indian spaceplane program X-37 References External links HOPE-X Program Drop test of a scaled model of the Hope-X vehicle Spaceplanes Space program of Japan Cancelled spacecraft Reusable spacecraft