What do Tom Hanks, the Boeing Co. and the Vatican have in common?
They’re all connected to Hollywood’s new thriller “Angels &Demons” based on the novel by Dan Brown. It’s the prequel to Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” a New York Times bestseller. The novel and film are set in the Vatican City.
The film, starring Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor, opens in theaters May 15.
In the book, Brown’s main character, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks in the movie) gets a high-speed lift from Boston to Geneva, Switzerland on an X-33.
The aircraft is described as “vaguely reminiscent of the space shuttle except hat the top had been shaved off, leaving it perfectly flat. …The wings were practically nonexistent – just two stubby fins on the rear of the fuselage.”
The X-33 in Brown’s novel is owned by CERN and is based off Boeing’s X-33 prototype for a contract with NASA.
In reality, NASA picked Lockheed Martin’s design for an unmanned reusable space plane. However, Boeing designed the craft’s engines. Here’s NASA’s fact sheet on the X-33.
The program was cancelled in 2001 by NASA. Here’s the GAO report on it. For more on the program, read this Wikipedia entry.
In Brown’s “Angels &Demons” novel, the X-33’s pilot, brags about the aircraft’s speed (11,000 miles per hour).
The pilot tells his passenger, Langdon: “The future’s here, it’s just taking some time to get to the public sector. You can kiss conventional jets goodbye.”
We all know that Boeing abandoned its high speed Sonic Cruiser in favor of its fuel efficient 787 Dreamliner.
We’ll have to wait and see how (or whether) Hollywood includes the X-33 in the Angels &Demons film out next week.
Video of Lockheed’s X-33
Trailer for “Angels &Demons”
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