When I heard Space X tried to do the reusable vehicle, DC-X was the one that came to my mind. I still remember when I first seen it launch and landing back then. Amazing thing.
I remember seeing a few videos about this vehicle long ago, but none went into it's significant successes. I just remember it falling over due to one of its legs failing to extend. It had the impression that it was a failed design and program. From watching your video, I now know it was an excellent vehicle with impressive accomplishments. The only real failure was the lack of vision in those who cut it's funding. Thanks
Holy wow. At 64, I have followed aviation and space exploration my entire life. Watched the live man-on-the-moon broadcast. I don't know how I missed this. What an incredible technological and human story. You are kind of brilliant. THANK YOU. Carry on MacDuff.
If I remember correctly, Pete Conrad was involved with it just before his death ..... should have kept going with this program, I wonder where we would be at this time if we had. RIP P.Conrad Apollo 12
Shall we get started on the competition between McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed-Martin? My Mickey D's rocket can beat your LockMart Spaceplane -- that NEVER left the ground!
@@HertaSeggs, currency inflation isn't the real issue here: it's performance. McD's demonstrator actually worked, but LockMertin's never took shape as actual hardware.
The remains of the DC-X is stored in a warehouse owned by the Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, NM. I actually got to lay my hands on it during a private tour. One of the legs did not extend that caused the crash.
It's a shame they don't have it on display, I'd go visit for the first time in about 2 decades just to see it. Would be a good way to compensate for the loss of the Sonic Wind rocket sled, which is now (rightfully) at the Smithsonian.
As I recall it did several successful test flights before the landing leg gave out......a pity they didn't continue the program. But look.....Musk and Bezzos are doing something similar. The good Ole boys missed the boat on this one. Douglas, Lockheed, Boeing.......are more interested in suckling government teat, than actually producing anything. 🤣
@@commanderbracey7501 But stop to THINK for a second brother ...... where do you think all the seed tech and most of the technical experts came from for Musk and Bezos to employ in their companies. They came from programs like the DC-X programs that were FUNDED with government money ........................ Just sayin
It is bullshit tho. This is a grasshopper so it only beat jeff bezos to suborbital atmosphere. Comparing it to landing an orbital first stage is beyond absurd. This did not influence spacex in any way, it was just a failed grasshoper that never got close to proving you could land an orbital rocket. Which is why ula, lockheed, boeing, and arriannespace all claimed it was impossible until spacex did it.
@@_PatrickO What utter rubbish. This was beyond "hopper" and more successful. It was never intended to go to space, but was a technology demonstrator for a space capable vehicle! Did you not watch and listen?
@@_PatrickO The concept of the retriever rocket was depeloped in the early 1950ies - by Wernher von Braun. NASA could have rockets like these in the Mid-1960ies, but, sadly enough, wasn´t interested .
Built as a one-third-size scale prototype, the DC-X was never designed to achieve orbital altitudes or velocity, but instead to demonstrate the concept of vertical take off and landing. It was the inspiration for SpaceX Falcon ships.
It was also a major inspiration to Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin who got several of the DC-X program team members to help build the Charon, Goddard, PM-1, and New Shepard vehicles. Several of those flew long before SpaceX's Grasshopper.
100% and the only reason we got the sts shuttles was bc they agreed to take satellites up for other agencies. It's very hard to get funding believe it or not. No politician has interest in space travel.
I don't think a practical government version was ever possible. All NASA ever built was a model, but a full size version would have been much more difficult. SpaceX had to change some engineering paradigms that the government likely would not have been willing to change. Namely, using Steel instead of ceramics as a lighter alternative for the outer shell. The government always spends way too much money on things the private sector can do cheaper.
Great video. I was a contractor to a contractor (Rockwell) on this in the mid nineties and remember meeting Pete Conrad and was in awe. He would tell Apollo stories and I was a young engineer at White Sands who would have worked for nothing just to be there (I did like being paid though)! A really funny story that I remember was after a flight, I walked up to the vehicle (once cleared) and plugged in me bulky “laptop” and downloaded the data and uploaded instructions for the next flight. Back in the trailer, a few dudes from NASA walked up to me after our excitement and asked how we got data since they lost their telemetry. I said “but you’re NASA?” I told them that we were required to have no moving parts in our acoustics emission acquisition system which made us use an all firmware hard drive on board. No cpu fans either. The firmware drive was 100MB and cost $10k! They were impressed with our 3rd tier subcontractor innovation. The vehicle was really a technology demonstrator (which is why I was one it) for the Venture Star.
Thank you! How did RU-vid know? When this video on the DC-X prototype popped up I remembered reading about it 20 years ago when I was a kid and then completely forgot to learn about what finally happened; this rocket's capabilities had excited me quite a bit back then.
Great video. The big question to me is why didn't McDonnel Douglas build on this work and move forward with the technology? They only moved forward when the government paid for the research. Were they afraid of making the investment internally once the government funding evaporated? If they had, they would have been able to use this technology and develop a booster that would be the premier ground to orbit for years due to the lower cost. It is reminiscent of Daimler making the first gasoline powered automobile in 1885 being overshadowed by Ford's moving assembly line in 1913 driving the cost down to make the auto affordable. SpaceX invested internally to make launching affordable. They are receiving NASA funding for Artemis, but if that dries up, they would still move forward with internal funding.
I remember watching this throughout the 90s! Like many good ideas NASA had, it ended up dead and cancelled. It just seems that modern day NASA has no idea how to see something through anymore in terms of launch systems.
Congress decides NASA's funding and every single member would happily scrap an effective, well managed promising project to fund a pointless and wasteful project as long as the money gets spent in their district
That’s part of the problem with a lot of government programs. Even if it isn’t as sinister a matter as congress channeling funds into their own districts, you never know when one of the myriad of things congress gets involved in becomes a bigger priority, leaving them to abandon things they don’t feel the same kind of need for.
Government including NASA hires the ‘safest’, paper-shuffling chair-warmers, people who will not threaten any status quo, will play the self-serving bureaucracy game.. But more importantly no talented, innovative person would want to work in NASA.. where they would be crushed by mind-numbing Government incompetence, inertia, dysfunction, futility & sloth. Government is greed, waste, sloth, incompetence, irresponsible, uncaring & Nasa is Government..
Its a shame the US didnt continue with this tech considering that the DCX did what Musk was only doing only a decade back, but considering the USA need to prop up its economy with its MIC a reusable, quick turnaround space vehicle will not spread those contracts across the US.
I remember very well The Clipper. I was very excited about it. It just died. Pete Conrad was killed in a motocycle accident. We had it all ready. I am 53. I thought we would be regularly going to space. I mean the average public. Sadly, someone stopped it.
woo-hoo! just by chance came about this..... at 2:06 you see a glittering metallic transport stand for it. I am quite sure that it has been constructed and sold by my father. Unique design. And he had talked about some projects in US at that time, and he had been very proud of it.....
@FridayGood SpaceX did not create a sub-orbital rocket powered pogo stick like the DC-X, Blue Origin did, and Blue Origin successfully landed its New Shepard booster before SpaceX landed a Falcon 9. Therefore, the comparison to SpaceX made in the title of this video is incorrect. That's the gist of my comment.
@FridayGood Blue Origin flew its rocket powered VTVL test vehicle, Charon (same thing as DC-X), in 2005. Grasshopper did not fly until 2012. You never mentioned Blue Origin because you did not know the facts as to who did what first. Now you do. You're welcome.
NOPE, Should have made the Space Shuttle Orbiter with Self Landing Rocket Boosters , just like SpaceX does Today, also remove the Engines from the Shuttle as All 3 Boosters are Powered. Shuttle could then Navigate with just OMS Engines and Thrusters. Deffinetly possible with 1980's Rocket Technology.
I was a great fan of Jerry Pournelle, ( polymath: scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers!) and in particular his uplifting, optimistic "Step Farther Out" series. He was a part of this, and a fierce advocate for the importance of getting out into the solar system. His dream died with the abandonment of space by the US government, loss of funding, the hideously expensive Shuttle program. He forecasted that private enterprise seemed the only alternative. I only wished he had lived long enough to be around to comment on the current environment - and SpaceX in particular.
I was stationed at Holloman AFB, which borders WSMR, and had a chance to see at least one flight of the DC-XA in 1996, and was on Duty when it had it's final accident. Glad to hear it is at the Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. Maybe they can patch what's left together and put it on display.
While studying in the aerospace field in those years, I followed this project and others like the venture star. I still have some of the newspaper articles featuring the progress and failures.
I used to write A Level System Specs for the USAF. Personally, I don't think that the Operational Requirements or the Functional Specs should include structural or materials requirements. And I am highly skeptical about Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO), simply from the economies of Thrust to Weight ratios. That said, I am highly impressed by the performance and achievements of the Delta Clipper and I'm glad it was funded and tested to the level that it did, despite its limitations and ultimate cancellation.
My brother was stationed at white sands NM and helped with this project. He posed for pics in front of it back in the 90s. They called it the delta clipper. Also around that time Boys to Men recorded a music video at white sands.
So cool to see a video on this! Ive been a fan of this for many years. I discovered it in a book of mine from 2005 and at the time i had very limited info i could find on it. So cool to finally see video of it. I remember as a kid drawing/designing a "full size" manned rocket inspired by this.
I don't think SpaceX ever claimed to be first to attempt the technology but is inarguably the first company to successfully develop it to full scale, comprehensive re-usability.
Space X was the first to make a partially reusable orbital rocket, since BO has none and the DC-X wasn't a orbital vehicle. Also Space X had a much more difficult position since a single engine produce more thrust than the empty booster and it can't hover, the timing has to be perfect or the F-9 will hit the ground
@Constance & James Turpin are you aware a merlin engine can't throttle back that much to deliver less thrust than the empty weight of the Booster? For the F9 the timing had to be perfect, the engine has to be ignited at a perfect timing, to slow down the vehicle and ensure it stops at the moment it touches the ground. If they would ignite the engine too early it would stop above the ground and ascend again, and crash. The Booster is much faster at the sane time and reaches twice the speed of sound. This is completely different compared to a small subsonic test vehicle which never flown above 10 km and has engines small enough to hover. The starship will do a combination of aerodynamic deceleration and an engine landing (with the belly flop maneuver), which is also completely different than the DC-X landing, at the same time the vehicle is much larger and more powerful than the Saturn 5. The shuttle killed a crew of 7 every 60 flights, it's the most fatal launcher in history, and one of the most expensive one with 1,6 billion $ per launch. The shuttle suffered from problems never solved (like the heat shield problems, they never found a solution for that and a 3rd shuttle almost crashed during reentry because of that.
LOL! I definitely understand what you are saying... I've got a few decades working on several (very) large Government projects. A very good case can be made that Government Projects are just a form of wealth redistribution. Virtually every State gets an exclusive piece of the pie, funneling $$$ to their State. Each year @ allocation time, ridiculous "things" happen... (use your imagination)
....For the Public. You needed to end that with, for the public. None of the things that work "too well" go away. Ever. They stop being public projects. That whole there goes the government again being stupid/greedy or too corrupt/ whatever, that makes people throw their hands up and forget about it, is by design.
I remember this, they tested one at White Sands Missile Range when I was a kid. I told my dad I wanted to go see it but it was a closed launch, but you could see it from the highway.
@@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647 My Dad took us out to the country where there was no light pollution, and we lay on the grass and watched Skylab go over! It was clear a night you could see a billion stars and the milky way too!
The history of the US space program is littered with so many promising paths cut short by budgets and politics that would have taken us so much further by now. It is truly amazing what they achieved with the limited computing resources back then.
It is crazy how people are trying so hard to pretend spacex didn't invent vtol for orbital rockets. There are youtubers testing self made rockets that mimic the dc-x capabilities. It is not special and it was not a contributor to any current space rockets. The only craft that lands this way is bezos's new shepard and the spacex grasshopper. Neither are capable of reaching space and neither reused any data from the dc-x which was way less of a vehicle, wikipedia says bezos hired some of the engineers, but that was over 20 years ago. It is doubtful that this influenced new shepard at all because blue origin would have recreated these tests with modern technology in a few days of testing. The karman line was reached by a private company in 2003 with burt rutan and that directly spawned richard branson's craft which is essentially just a modernized version of SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne is the only craft that has any connection to any current hopper or orbital vehicle. Virgin orbit is the company that scaled up the SpaceShipOne launch system to be orbital. If people want to cover early commercial space flight systems, they should look at burt rutan and SpaceShipOne. It is the only early system that influenced a system that exists today.
@@_PatrickO They also forget how much more massive and bigger the Falcon 9 is compared to the Clipper. The Falcon 9 has to shed hundreds if not thousands of times more energy (and hence needs a super heat shield and a very robust build) to land all the way from orbit. There is really no comparison between this and Falcon landings or Blue Origins little dinky suborbital rocket and Falcon landings. Let alone something like Falcon Heavy or (when it happens) Starship.
@@_PatrickO musk invented nothing all he did was just recruit a thousand engineers from nasa and work them to the bone until a concept that has been done a trillion time in video games and in real life works your subsidy munching con man impresses no one but the 16 year old at my school
This program maxed out at $60 million. NASA eventually spent about $400 Million to help develope the Falcon 9. Imagine what could have been, if this program got that level of funding 25/30 years ago.
It was SSTO, but SSTO sucks in terms of payload, since it has a lot of dead weight it has to put up into orbit and accelerate it to 27 K km/h in a Leo. 2 staged vehicles are more practical, they offer more payload. Just look to the shuttle, it was limited to earth orbit because it had too much dead weight (wings are useless in space, but have to be accelerated). It has a reason why all other launch vehicles are 2 staged (only heavy lifters like the Saturn 5 have even 3 stages)
@@koc988 you're right if you say it was planned from start, but if they would have wanted a vehicle capable of deep space they would have had to plan it completely different. A spacecraft is always designed for a purpose, there is never a surprise afterwards in technical capabilities. An SSTO would have suffered from the same problem, it would have been limited to Leo just because of physics.
@@simonm1447 True. Saturn V was a series-staged three stage launch vehicle in the super heavy class. Skylab was launched by the two-stage version of the Saturn V. The 3-stage Saturn V can also be considered as a two-stage super heavy lifter with a very large kick stage (the S--IVB).
Great timing bringing up the old yet important information on this great research and engineering. The regular news has been too busy stroking billionaire egos to do the research the full story of space research and engineering.
I'm sure a lot was learned about how to hover a heavy aircraft in Earth gravity and atmosphere. The problem with single stage to orbit is the loss of efficiency in vacuum.
@@malcolmdrake6137 I'm guessing this article may have been Blue Origin, but it doesn't matter. The New Shepard does hover before touching down, also, the New Shepard cannot go fast enough to reach orbit (it was never meant to). SpaceX Starships will have the power and throttle control to hover (and they will need it, big time).
Very informative. Thanks for posting. Many have never seen this NASA Delta Clipper concept on film. Many would agree this concept is very Gerry Anderson: 'Thunderbirds are go...'
It's an amazing story of technological innovation and I'm surprised a modern private sector company attempting to gain 3easy, inexpensive access to space and near earth orbit would simply pull out these plans and update them with newly developed materials and computer command and control systems. Bam! A ready made vehicle that can be relaunched every few days, but...
Rumor has it that Blue Origin's New Shepard is pretty much exactly what you described, just modified to meet the specific needs of suborbital space tourism. The fact that a lot of folks who worked on Delta Clipper also worked on developing New Shepard gives weight to this theory.
I was working at the McDonnell Douglas Huntington Beach plant and saw the rollout ceremony of the DC-X in 1992. Later I worked on a NASA contract to build and test heat shield concepts of the X-33 (1995-96). Unfortunately, the Lockheed version of the X-33 won over the MDC X-33 competitor.
Looks way ahead of its time. And just 16millions? Considering the amount at that time is still pretty low compared to the costs of other spacecrafts of that era
DC-X: how NASA dropped the ball so badly it set American space exploration back not only 20 years, but to the point it took a wacky billionaire to fix it.
The secret of single stage to orbit designs is to avoid them. They are perfect as in the main enemy of good enough fully reusable two stages. Its the stuff you want your enemies to pour money into. Now this might change with high twr fusion engines or other major changes.
Oh, I wouldn't want a fusion engine operating in Earth's atmosphere. The problem isn't any sort of toxic or radioactive exhaust, but rather the sheer power output. In general, the power output *P* of a rocket is given by: P = 0.5 * F * v Where *F* is the thrust output (on Earth, this will have to be enough to lift the ship off the ground, so it's at least the mass of the vehicle times Earth's gravitational acceleration) and *v* is the exhaust velocity. Modern chemical rockets have an exhaust velocity of around 3 kilometers per second, so what would happen if we replaced them with a same-thrust fusion rocket that manages 3,000 km/s? Our power output would also be a thousand times greater. Considering the bomb-like conditions already at the launch pad, a high-thrust fusion rocket would be like a nuclear explosive going off every second. Our launch pads would become launch craters.
$60 million over several years is almost literally nothing when you're talking about the budget of the US government. We learned a vast amount for mere pennies. A program isn't a failure just because it was discontinued - and all things considered with the benefit of hindsight, this one was a huge success.
@@tomdumb6937 If they throttle down the thrust output, then the vehicle isn't producing enough force to counteract Earth's gravity. If they throttle down the exhaust velocity, well, it's not much of a high-performance fusion engine, is it?
I actually got to see this flying late at night over the Santa Barbara Channel on a moonless night; I thought it was a UAP until I saw and heard helicopters pacing it and figured it was probably military. It gained altitude and then suddenly shot off to the west and disappeared like it went behind something. Thanks for showing this.
Great soundtrack on this video ! It reminds me of a toned down Wagner . Who's the artist?... thanks for all the great educational and entertaining videos !
@@FuriousImp Yes. It fails on most of the video because of the dialogue. The longest dialogue-free patch got three different results: all wrong. One hilariously wrong.
The thing that space X changed is to make it two staged. There is no point in accelerating the heavy lift off engines to 27t km/h. Just return them and be way more efficient in space
It isn´t as straight forward as that. With a 2 stage rocket, you add a second engine. You add separation boosters and controls, structural sturdiness at the seam, wire connections, fuel connections, control connections and a second fuel tank. All that adds weight too. And a lot more complexity. Yes, they will have done the math, and a 2 stage rocket will be more weight efficient. But the difference between the two isn´t that big. With one stage, you stick to one engine system, and one fuel tank. All the wiring is kept in one piece, and the rocket structure is kept simple. The tank itself isn´t that heavy, most of the weight is the engine, but the complexity is kept to a minimum. With more components ("All made in Taiwan!!") comes increased chances of failure. The old adage "keep it simple, stupid" applies. And makes the most sense.
@LorneSchneider...If they are working for NASA, the are most certainly beholden to congress and the American tax payer... Last I heard, over half of it's funding has come from government contracts...
Isn't Elons whole thing taking old ideas that didn't take off and throwing a bunch of money behind it through fancy marketing to see if it goes anywhere.
Claiming that the DC-X “beat” SpaceX by 20 years is misleading. This craft never reached Orbit, and barely demonstrated reusability. Propulsive landings have been done by experimental spacecrafts and training vehicles for decades.
The DC-X never really "beat" SpaceX, as SpaceX launched its early Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets to orbit and not in short vertical tests. The DC-X did pioneer the VTOL concept for rockets and demonstrated that the technique could work, but it never reached anything close to an operational reusable orbital launch vehicle (NASA takes some of the blame for this). SpaceX finally demonstrated a payload delivery to orbit on a redesigned Falcon 9 (v 1.1) with a successful first stage powered return with vertical landing near the launch site on December 21st, 2015.
@@EBFISCHADLER Did you even READ what I wrote?? I clearly stated, "*SpaceX finally demonstrated a payload delivery to orbit on a redesigned Falcon 9 (v 1.1) with a successful first stage powered return with vertical landing near the launch site on December 21st, 2015.*" I did NOT say, nor imply that the Falcon 9's first stage achieved orbit, but only that the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle delivered a payload to orbit with a successful return of the first stage under power back down to a powered vertical landing at Landing Zone 1 located only 5.6 miles from where the rocket took off. The DC-X program was not able to continue to investigate the development of a potential "launch from anywhere" single-stage-to-orbit concept due the budget cuts and cancellation of the program. SpaceX may have been somewhat inspired by the results of the DC-X test flights, but the DC-X did not "beat" SpaceX.
@@HarrisonAdAstra Yes there is. Open research conducted during the DC-X program by NASA that was, and is, being used by programs like SpaceX and others. It's not hardware.
Nice one.🙂👍 I think the last flight ended badly because a landing leg failed to deploy. But the DCX was doomed from the start. You can't make money from low cost projects that actually work. There's much more profit in large, never ending contracts paid to private companies.
Again, "Lockgreed" steps up, with another "Cost overrun" program that offers alot, but ultimately delivers little, to bump other potential working programs, out of existence.
I knew a lot of those dudes (local). They were overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. It's amazing it worked at all given the shoestring budget they had to make due with.
Everytime I think something is "state of the art" or " on the cutting edge" of technology for our time, I see a video of said "technology" performing perfectly 30 YEARS EARLIER! I can't believe I have never heard of this reusable prototype! Imagine what the human race could do if lead by people with pure intentions of our future in mind. Well, it's nice to dream! .. 👽
SpaceX fans forget that SpaceX is standing on the shoulders of giants, and without all their immense efforts and groundwork that was already laid, SpaceX wouldn't have made it very far. The DC-X is a great example of a VTOL rocket that came decades before SpaceX and long before most SpaceX fans were even born.
@@jamescarter8311 You didn't really bother to read my post did you? Others were working on fully reusable single stage to orbit rockets before most of the engineers who work at SpaceX were even born. Without all the groundwork that NASA and others have laid down, such as the DC-X, SpaceX would not have been able to achieve 1% of what they have. They didn't have the knowledge base. And have you heard of the Space Shuttle? It flew 135 missions to low earth orbit, with a fully reusable orbiter. You'll probably argue 'but, but... the solid rocket motors and tank were dropped in the ocean'. Yes, where they were recovered, returned to land, refurbished, and flown again. Same as SpaceX has to do whith their first stage F9 boosters, but they return to land or on a barge instead of the ocean. SpaceX also dunks their Dragon space capsules into the ocean, where they have to be fished out and refurbished. The massive F9 payload fairings also end up in the ocean. Oh, but the best part is that the entire Falcon 9 second stage also ends up in the ocean and is not recoverable or reusable. I like how you conveniently ignored all the parts of a Falcon 9 that SpaceX dunks into the ocean, while also ignoring that the Space Shuttle existed for 30 years with a fully reusable orbiter decades before SpaceX. 😂
It was a tiny test craft that couldn't even reach the altitude of commercial airplanes. It never proved out anything related to space travel because it was never big enough to come close to space. The only possible craft influenced by this is new shepard which is another craft incapable of reaching space by a company who has never reached space with any rocket yet.
@@markplott4820 lol, it had no future. This small scale test wasn't proving anything out. Nothing this small craft did would have applied to a larger version. That is why it was cut off, nothing new was being learned after the first few flights and nothing was applicable to larger craft that could reach orbit. I do find it funny that wikipedia says jeff hired some of the engineers and to this day jeff's company hasn't reached space or orbit. They got to the karman line which was already done by burt rutan in 2003. A video should be done on burt rutan and SpaceShipOne. That concept was reused by richard branson by scaling it up for virgin orbit to reach actual space and get satellites into orbit.
@@_PatrickO So you don't think starship will reach space? its very large. sounds like you have a size complex. and yes the test in the video was badass.
No, it did not "beat" SpaceX because nothing was ever done with this design. On the other hand, SpaceX went after the concept (which, in reality, was invented by science-fiction writers), perfected it, and then DID SOMETHING WITH IT!
Landing rockets like this is, still, totally uneconomical. But then Elon Musk has never worried about making profit from his businesses. It's all smoke and mirrors - profits from taxpayers' money alone. Just like Tesla. They call him the Subsidy Truffle Hound, aka the Pretengineer...
@@jhvorlicky No, you're pretty much right about him. He is a dodgy operator. The fan boys will hate you for saying so, but the truth is out there so to speak. Amusing how he is dumping Grimes again - I guess she got a little too old for him, considering his track record for the younger ladies (he was buddying around with Epstein now wasn't he). So can add that to the list.
@@tomstamford6837 Agreed. Not a nice guy, at the very least. He can be charismatic, we can say that, I guess. Yeah, the fan boys fall for it, again and again and again! Do you think Texas Governor Greg Abbot will? Or has he already? I can't imagine he'll be as bad as New York Governor (vis-a-vis the Buffalo plant) or Cali Governor (vis-a-vis almost everything else).
