Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

Oldfart1939 · 2019-10-16 13:30:46

All of our local TV stations and newspapers had a release today about SNC's Dream Chaser being built in Louisville, Colorado. Our local Mars Society chapter may make an effort to visit the plant and get a closeup of the space plane, a reentry system similar to the Space Shuttle.
This is strictly the cargo version, designed to haul cargo to, and return sensitive experiments back to Earth, from ISS.

Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2019-10-16 13:32:57)

SpaceNut · 2019-10-16 17:48:59

Saw an article earlier in the day indicating that its swinging into production mode for more ships.

SpaceNut · 2020-08-18 17:54:45

More of the ship that could is in the COTS topic.

Sierra Nevada aims to complete Dream Chaser space plane in March

Terraformer · 2020-08-19 12:44:28

Ooh, nice. The Shuttle, as it ought to have been.

Any word on what the first one will be called?

SpaceNut · 2021-02-10 22:40:11

Dream chaser has been commented quite a bit under cots but this is progress on making it to fully functional...
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security company owned by Eren and Fatih Ozmen, is a step closer to landing the world's first commercial spaceplane on U.S. soil.

Dream Chaser, America's Spaceplane, will service the International Space Station (ISS) under a NASA contract in 2022; the vehicle will return from the ISS to a runway landing for the first time since NASA's space shuttle program ended in 2011.
"Dream Chaser is the only commercial, lifting-body space vehicle capable of a runway landing anywhere in the world. That's how astronauts prefer to travel to and from space and it's no wonder," said SNC CEO Fatih Ozmen. "The opportunity for our spaceplane to land on this historic runway where so many shuttle missions did before underscores both the practical advantages of Dream Chaser and its time-honored place in NASA's space exploration heritage."
Among its many attributes, Dream Chaser has the ability to land at any licensed landing site with a suitable 10,000 ft. runway capable of handling a typical commercial jet.

The location for landing is under the FAA for doing a batch of studies....

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) awarded the re-entry site license to Cape Canaveral Spaceport Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) in Florida at request of the state's aerospace economic development agency, making it the first commercially licensed re-entry site. The SLF, now referred to by Space Florida as the Launch and Landing Facility, at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) was the first purpose-built landing site for an orbiter returning from space. A total of 78 shuttle missions landed at the SLF.
The application process for the Re-entry Site License included an environmental assessment in collaboration with NASA, the FAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the community. SNC supported Space Florida, the state's aerospace economic development agency, in the agency's license application by providing inputs to sonic boom and risk analysis.
Next steps for SNC include continuing its work with the FAA to be issued a license to operate Dream Chaser re-entries at the SLF, building on the success of Space Florida's license application.

Oldfart1939 · 2021-04-11 11:31:44

The Angry Astronaut is a great fan of the Dream Chaser technology, and considers the Sierra Nevada approach to building a commercial Space Station quite feasible. And by the company (owned by two billionaires), affordable.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-25 03:23:31

Meet the ‘Dream Chaser,’ the Supersonic Space Craft Taking on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic

https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/ … 234694132/

tahanson43206 · 2022-09-14 20:43:26

Test flight ... Dream Chaser dropped from a helicopter and lands smoothly

An attempt to copy URL failed

This should be easy to find .... the story includes a video showing parts of the flight ...

Follow up later ... the video may have been from November of 2017...

Following the captive carry phase, the Dream Chaser performed a free flight test on November 11, being released by the Chinook from approximately 10,000 feet above ground level and autonomously flown to Edwards AFB Runway 22L, successfully landing and rolling out to a full stop, also known for first space shuttle landing on a concrete runway.

The test was conducted in 2017 .... I used this search string: Videos of Dream Chaser Chinook drop Test

This is almost 5 years ago. There ** should ** be more recent activity.

Update a bit later ... do we have a member with detective experience?

The team working on Dream Chaser seems to still be at work, but in my investigation this morning, I found years old reports. The plane itself seems to be similar to the ** very ** success X37b, which has Air Force funding and a national security mission.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2022-09-15 09:10:24

The fundamental notions behind Dreamchaser, X-37B, and the Space Shuttle are pretty much identical. All 3 are upper-stage spaceplanes launched vertically by rocket booster vehicles. All 3 are flat-bottomed hypersonic/supersonic wave-riders. All 3 use low-density refractory insulation on lateral skins and lee-side surfaces. All 3 use slow ablatives for their nosetip and leading edge solutions. All 3 are winged horizontal-landing designs.

Those are all well-known solutions for entry from Earth orbit, and there have been several other similar designs. They ultimately derive from what was designed but never flown for the X-20 Dyna-Soar that was cancelled in 1963. Better materials for much of these design approaches have been introduced since 1963. In particular, carbon-carbon composite has replaced graphite with zirconia rods as the nosetip and leading edge solution, and we now have the low-density ceramics, Avcoat ablative, and the PICA/PICA-X ablatives for lateral and leeside skins.

Dreamchaser's only real problem has been being starved for government funding. It was not selected for the COTS cargo and crew programs, when SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's Starliner were. 2020 hindsight suggests the Starliner selection might have been a mistake.

GW

RobertDyck · 2022-09-15 14:51:42

Tom,
DreamChaser is based on HL-20. After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, NASA was worried they would never again be allowed by Congress to fly Shuttle. So they developed HL-20. The name implies it was based on HL-10, a lifting body developed by NASA in 1966. However, it was actually based on the Soviet BOR-4, an unmanned test article used to test heat shield tiles for Buran, the Soviet copy of Shuttle. But BOR-4 had a body shape based on Spiral. Spiral was the Soviet response to Dyna-Sor. Spiral had a lifting body, cockpit for a single pilot. Spiral had a single small turbojet engine for a powered landing. It was launched on a two-stage rocket, which was to be launched from the back of a supersonic aircraft. Spiral had variable dihedral wings: folded back behind it's lifting body for atmospheric entry, moved to an angle for hypersonic flight, and flat/level for subsonic flight and landing. The BOR-4 unmanned test article had wings with a fixed dihedral (angled for hypersonic flight), no cruise-back jet engine, and smaller vertical stabilizer. BOR-4 landed in the Indian ocean. An Australian intelligence aircraft was able to take detailed photographs while it was floating. This gave them size, shape, density vs sea water, and centre of gravity from how it floated. NASA analyzed it from those photographs and found it flew better than any lifting body NASA developed. All lifting bodies have a control problem at a certain speed range, but BOR-4 was designed so it's control problem was at trans-sonic speed (mach 1.1 to mach 0.9). At that speed the lifting body is high up in the air with nothing to collide with but a cloud. NASA's lifting bodies had control problems at low speed including landing. You don't want control problems when trying to land.

Spiral prototype parked outdoors in Russia: (click image for Astronautix page on Spiral)

Astronautix: BOR-4

Wikipedia: HL-20

SpaceNut · 2023-12-26 13:54:00

Anticipation.....

Dream Chaser is getting tested at NASA

After a journey spanning almost two decades, Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane, named Tenacity, is officially undergoing environmental testing at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility located at NASA's Glenn Research Center in anticipation of its maiden flight to the International Space Station (ISS), currently scheduled for April 2024.
The environmental testing consists of analyzing the spacecraft's ability to withstand rigorous vibrations during launch and re-entry, along with the harsh environment of outer space, including extreme temperature changes and vacuum conditions. This testing comes after Sierra Space announced the completion of Tenacity at its facilities in Louisville, Colorado last month, along with the delivery of Sierra Space's cargo module, Shooting Star, to the Neil Armstrong Test Facility that same month, as well.
"Our platform includes Dream Chaser, a revolutionary, highly reusable commercial spaceplane with global runway access, and the first business-ready commercial space station, leveraging the most advanced expandable structural architecture that will exponentially decrease the cost of product development and manufacturing in space."
Sierra Nevada naming its first spacecraft "Tenacity" is only fitting given Dream Chaser's long and difficult journey getting to this point. This includes rejections, company buyouts, legal proceedings, engineering designs, test flights, and finally being selected by NASA in January 2016 to deliver cargo to the ISS.
Less than a year after being approved by NASA, Dream Chaser successfully performed a successful free flight test at Edwards AFB in southern California in November 2017, which was a huge milestone for the spacecraft and the advancement of the commercial space industry.
The goal of Dream Chaser is to provide a more cost-effective method for delivering cargo and supplies to the ISS, as while the spaceplane will be launched on a rocket, it will land like an airplane just like NASA's Space Shuttle used to do. This will further enable its reusability capabilities, as NASA has contracted Dream Chaser for a minimum of six cargo resupply missions to the ISS during its contract.
Dream Chaser's maiden flight next year will be a collaboration between flight and ground controllers at the Dream Chaser Mission Control Center in Louisville, Colorado, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. During this flight, Tenacity will conduct a myriad of in-flight tests after launch and prior to docking with the ISS. This includes performing vehicle maneuvering demonstrations within the ISS approach ellipsoid, which is a 4 x 2 x 2-kilometer (2.5 x 1.25 x 1.25-mile) invisible border encircling the ISS.
Unlike the autonomous docking system employed on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, Dream Chaser will be docked and undocked to the ISS using the Canadarm2, which is a 17-meter-long (56-foot-long) robotic arm built by the Canadian Space Agency and installed on the ISS in 2001. During this mission, Tenacity is slated to deliver more than 3,500 kilograms (7,800 pounds) to the ISS and stay docked with the orbiting laboratory for approximately 45 days before being undocked by Canadarm2 and returning to Earth.
Once Dream Chaser is greenlit for future flights after this first mission, it will be capable of delivering approximately 5,200 kilograms (11,500 pounds) of supplies to the ISS while staying docked for up to 75 days. Additionally, Dream Chaser will be capable of returning more than 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) of experiments and cargo from the ISS to Earth, with more than 4,000 kilograms (8,700 pounds) of trash being discarded during Earth reentry using the Shooting Star cargo module.

GW Johnson · 2023-12-27 15:41:11

Look a the last paragraph in post #9 just above. I still stand by that assessment.

GW

Oldfart1939 · 2024-02-03 13:39:19

Dream Chaser is currently being stacked at Kennedy Space center for it's inaugural flight test to the ISS. It's great to finally see this happening, as it's a well thought out and executed design.

tahanson43206 · 2024-05-06 09:53:06

This is a follow up to Oldfart1939's post #13....

People also ask
What happened to Dream Chaser?
Dream Chaser - Wikipedia
However, on November 17, 2020, SNC announced it would be delayed until early 2022. In May 2022, it was announced by the deputy manager of ISS, Dana Weigel, that the mission was scheduled for February 2023. The mission has since then been delayed further, to June 2024.

If a NewMars member finds updates about the flight, please add them here.

Here's another snippet, with the vehicle name: Tenacity

Dream Chaser enters final testing ahead of 2024 debut ...
Space.com
https://www.space.com › dream-chaser-spacecraft-2024...
Dec 27, 2023 — If all goes to plan, the spacecraft dubbed 'Tenacity' will launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket in 2024.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2024-05-06 17:21:31

The BE-4 rocket engines that will power this Vulcan are in final acceptance testing at Blue Origin's facilities in West Texas, the officials said. The Vulcan core stage and Centaur upper stage are also in final assembly in ULA's main factory in Decatur, Alabama. The hardware readiness should be capable of supporting an April launch.

The second Vulcan launch will carry the Dream Chaser spacecraft into orbit for Sierra Space. The winged vehicle will fly a cargo mission that carries supplies to the International Space Station for NASA. After more than a decade of development, Dream Chaser is undergoing final tests. However, there remain some questions about when it will be ready for its debut launch.

Sierra Space Dream Chaser® Spaceplane Successfully Completes First Phase of Pre-Flight Testing

tahanson43206 · 2024-05-30 11:24:46

Here is a snapshot update of the status of Dream Chaser as of 2024/05/30....

Per Google:
Tenacity's first flight, expected in late 2024, '
End quote.

Per Google:

Dream Chaser Cargo - Gunter's Space Page - skyrocket.de
Gunter's Space Page
https://space.skyrocket.de › doc_sdat › dreamchaser-cargo
Jan 8, 2024 — Mass: 9000 kg. Orbit: 400 km × 400 km, 51.6° (typical). Satellite, COSPAR, Date, LS, Launch Vehicle, Remarks. Dream Chaser Cargo F1 (Tenacity F1) ...
People also ask
What is the mass of the Dream Chaser launch?
How much does Dream Chaser weigh?
How much cargo can Dream Chaser carry?
How much does the Dream Chaser cost per launch?
Feedback
Dream Chaser
eoPortal
https://www.eoportal.org › Other Space Activities
Nov 24, 2020 — The Dream Chaser cargo system is designed to deliver up to 5,500 kg of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the space station, including food, ...
Dream Chaser
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Dream_Chaser
Dream Chaser is an American reusable lifting-body spaceplane developed by Sierra Space. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space ...
Dream Chaser - Gunter's Space Page - skyrocket.de
Gunter's Space Page
https://space.skyrocket.de › doc_sdat › dreamchaser
Jan 14, 2023 — Dream Chaser ; HL-20 lifting body · 2 × hybrid motors (dual for deorbit and launch escape system) · Batteries · 9000 kg.
Sierra Space's Dream Chaser prepares for pre-launch ...
Spaceflight Now
https://spaceflightnow.com › 2024/05/14 › sierra-spaces-...
May 14, 2024 — In an interview with Spaceflight Now in January, Bruno said the company was making good progress towards the planned launch rate of 25 rockets ...
How Sierra Space Protects America's Next Space Plane ...
NASASpaceFlight.com -
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com › Commercial
Sep 29, 2023 — Dream Chaser is expected to carry up to five metric tons of pressurized cargo and a half metric ton of unpressurized cargo to the ISS. That's in ...
Sierra Space Dream Chaser DISCUSSION Thread (was SNC)
NASASpaceFlight.com -
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com › ...
Jun 3, 2023 — 3.8 mt is the largest payload mass launched so far. But Northrup-Grumman claims 3.5 metric tons is the limit. That may be based on the Antares ...
Shake, rattle and launch: Dream Chaser spaceplane ...
Phys.org
https://phys.org › Astronomy & Space › Space Exploration
Feb 1, 2024 — The first spaceplane of a planned line, Tenacity, was completed at the company's factory in Louisville, Colorado in November and then shipped to ...
Up Close and Personal With Dream Chaser Tenacity ...
autoevolution
https://www.autoevolution.com › News › Coverstory
Feb 6, 2024 — The groundbreaking but canceled X-20 Dyna-Soar program of the mid-1960s inspired Tenacity's lifting body construction and expendable rocket ...
HL-20 Personnel Launch System
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › HL-20_Personnel_Lau...
Launch mass, 10,884 kg (23,995 lb) ... Projected empty weight of the HL-20 was 23,000 ... The Dream Chaser spacecraft is based on the HL-20 lifting-body design.
Related searches

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2024-06-16 20:53:47

Dream Chaser came up in discussion in the Google Meeting of 2024/06/16 ....

A Google search revealed that the vehicle is safely moved to Florida, and that a flight is tentatively scheduled for August >> September.

A successful flight of this vehicle would be a demonstration of a flying vehicle able to return to a landing field as a glider. That would be a definite step up from the current landing methods for human passengers. The Russians, the Chinese and the Americans are all using parachute landing methods. The Russians are landing on land, except when they accidentally land in water. The Chinese are (as near as I can tell) returning by parachute to land. The US manned capsules are still landing in water. I asked Google but it found no evidence the US is considering moving to landing on land. The reason given was the convenience of landing on water which saves the mass of retro rockets, which both the Russians and the Chinese include in their designs.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2024-06-17 08:50:08

Parachute landing a capsule on land (with retro thrust at the last second) at something in the 20+ mph vertical velocity class is too sudden a stop for crews (or delicate equipment) to easily survive. Apollo was capable of landing on land in an emergency, with crew couch supports that would crush. But the risk of injury was rather significant.

The last-second retro thrust slows the 20+ mph descent rate to around 5+ mph at impact, which makes the landing easily survivable. However, it is live ordnance. So you are trading one danger for another. The track record suggests the risk of the hard landing outweighs the risks posed by the live ordnance. The Russians first came up with this concept for air-dropping main battle tanks back around 1950 or so. It went immediately into their early spacecraft designs, enabling landings within their borders.

GW

tahanson43206 · 2024-06-17 18:23:04

For GW Johnson re #18/..

Thank you for the details about use of retro rockets to soften parachute landings on land!

It is easy to understand why the US has stayed with sea landings for so long.

The detail about Russian experiments with air dropping tanks is particularly interesting (to me for sure!)

The Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser concept it intended to avoid both scenarios, so I hope it is successful, and this topic is available for NewMars members to report news as it develops.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2024-06-18 15:12:09

I saw films taken of Russian tanks being air-dropped in battle exercises. These were shown on Walter Cronkite's old "20th Century" program in the early 1950's. The rockets are located at the junction where the parachute shroud lines connect to the strap or straps that hang onto the payload. They fire in a conically-downward spread around the periphery of the payload. They are ignited upon proximity to the ground (somewhere around 10-15 feet or thereabouts).

Blue Origin is doing something very similar with its New Shepard suborbital spaceflight vehicles. The booster lands very similar to a Falcon 1st stage core. The capsule comes down by chutes, but fires rockets to slow down at the last second. That's what the dust cloud is, around the periphery of the capsule, when it touches down. Surface proximity fires them at about 10 feet or so.

This is a very old technique for making parachute landings on land without bad touchdown shock. It has worked for about 7 decades now.

A variant of it has been what the smallish JPL probes do for landing on Mars. It's just that the rockets have to be bigger, and you fire them earlier, because they have to slow you to around 2-5 mph from about Mach 0.8, not 20-25 mph. It only works up to about a ton landed on Mars, because otherwise you come out of the hypersonics too low for the chute to work. What good is a chute that does not have enough time to actually slow you down subsonic? Or maybe not even enough time to deploy and inflate?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-06-18 15:13:33)

tahanson43206 · 2024-06-18 16:05:55

Hopefully the Dream Chaser will succeed, and parachutes can be retired from use as a way of returning astronauts to Earth.

On the other hand, this topic now contains a most interesting set of posts about that reliable astronaut return technology.

From now on, if we are lucky, this topic will contains reports of Dream Chaser preparations for the first launch, as well as reports of the performance of the system after launch.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2024-06-18 18:28:07

I hope Dreamchaser succeeds. It is amazing that Sierra Nevada has kept this alive and going, despite a lack of government funding. If it does succeed, it could replace Boeing's troubled Starliner as the alternate to SpaceX's Dragon.

It was NASA that insisted crew Dragon return via parachutes to ocean landings. SpaceX's original design called for thrusted landings on land, with the parachutes as only a backup to the retro-propulsion. Which NASA decision was before SpaceX proved retro-propulsion to be feasible and reliable with Falcon cores.

GW

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-06 06:17:10

A few weeks have gone by since GW's post about Dream Chaser... it is time for an update. If anyone in the current active membership has a bit of time, please report on the status of the planned launch from Florida.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-06 15:54:43

August 2, News release from Sierra Space:
Sierra Space Commences Final Testing and Launch Preparations for Dream Chaser® Spaceplane at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

Unfortunately it just says "in preparation" with a lot of corporate speak of "we're great!" I think it's great too, but no launch date.

Void · 2024-08-17 20:37:36

Some Speculation on Dream Chaser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9cuuRCYfk
Quote:

SpaceX Genius Solution To Launch NASA's new Space Plane BETTER than ULA Vulcan!
TECH MAP
42K views 6 days ago UNITED STATES
SpaceX Genius Solution To Launch NASA's new Space Plane BETTER than ULA Vulcan!

The Angry Astronaut has other ideas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvW_0Wg6rqs
Quote:

The biggest news this week wasn't SpaceX or Blue Origin! It was Sierra Space and ULA!!
The Angry Astronaut
143K subscribers
13,854 views 10 hours ago #space #nasa #spacex
A great many things happened this week I the world of Spaceflight! And the biggest news doesn't come from SpaceX or Blue Origin! It happened when Sierra Space started talking about buying ULA!
And here's why this is a perfect match! …

I would like to see as any good systems as possible, although I confess, Starship is the big one just now.

Done

Last edited by Void (2024-08-17 20:43:14)

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#1 2019-10-16 13:30:46

Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#2 2019-10-16 17:48:59

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#3 2020-08-18 17:54:45

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#4 2020-08-19 12:44:28

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#5 2021-02-10 22:40:11

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#6 2021-04-11 11:31:44

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#7 2022-06-25 03:23:31

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#8 2022-09-14 20:43:26

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#9 2022-09-15 09:10:24

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#10 2022-09-15 14:51:42

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#11 2023-12-26 13:54:00

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#12 2023-12-27 15:41:11

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#13 2024-02-03 13:39:19

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#14 2024-05-06 09:53:06

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#15 2024-05-06 17:21:31

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#16 2024-05-30 11:24:46

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#17 2024-06-16 20:53:47

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#18 2024-06-17 08:50:08

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#19 2024-06-17 18:23:04

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#20 2024-06-18 15:12:09

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#21 2024-06-18 16:05:55

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#22 2024-06-18 18:28:07

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#23 2024-08-06 06:17:10

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#24 2024-08-06 15:54:43

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

#25 2024-08-17 20:37:36

Re: Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser under construction in Colorado

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