In looking at the questions here and here, I'm wondering - was the VentureStar platform doomed from the start (in ways nobody could foresee), or was it only the cooling problems with aerospike engines that doomed it?
Not to multiply the questions, but to unify them under the main one, could Venturestar have been revamped with more traditional bell engines, and still worked as an SSTO? It just seems to me to have been a massive craft that could never have made SSTO under any configuration.