NASA Green Lights Production on the Dream Chaser, a Successor to the Space Shuttle
A former U.S. Air Force pilot and astronaut who piloted two shuttle flights and commanded another three will begin production on a successor to NASA’s space shuttle in Colorado.
In recent years, Steve Lindsey has been in charge of the design, development, and testing of the Dream Chaser, a spacecraft being built by Sierra Nevada Corp. at its Space Systems operations in Louisville. Last month, NASA gave the green light on production after the craft passed a crucial review.
The crewless Dream Chaser is set to launch in late 2020. The craft will carry supplies, science experiments, and other cargo to the International Space Station. The plan is to have Centennial-based United Launch Alliance deploy the craft atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, where it will use the same runway upon its return.
Lindsey, the vice president of Sierra Nevada’s space exploration systems, explained that they completed the critical design review in December, which marked an important milestone. The review was the culmination of literally hundreds of smaller critical design reviews by subsystems and systems.
NASA chose Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Orbital ATK, which was later acquired by Northrop Grumman, to take supplies to the space station as contractors under its Commercial Resupply Service 2 program in 2016. Sierra Nevada’s multi-million-dollar contract is for a minimum of six missions.
The Dream Chaser, which is much like the space shuttle’s design, will be the only winged spacecraft flying to the space station.
In the future, Sierra Nevada hopes to send a Dream Chaser with a crew into orbit. The company already has a sleek, winged vehicle model designed to carry humans and is the basis for the Dream Chaser that will launch in 2020.
The craft is the same size as the Dream Chaser and has the same flight controls, but wasn’t built to go into orbit. It was engineered for test flights and has completed the kind of runway landing the Dream Chaser will need to make upon return.
Sierra Nevada will own and operate the Dream Chaser, keeping with the public-private partnerships NASA has undertaken to deliver cargo and crews to the space station.
John Roth, vice president of business development for Sierra Nevada Space Systems, said that NASA is no longer making spacecraft. They’re looking for private companies as partners. Roth added that the partnerships are good for the public since it should save the government billions of dollars. It’s also good for private companies because they can spin off the technology and use the vehicles for other commercial applications.
Roth also stated that the excitement surrounding Dream Chaser has spread beyond the company’s space division, really energizing the entire workforce.
The spacecraft will be approximately 30 feet long, which is about one-quarter the size of the space shuttles, which were engineered with a more spacious cargo hold to accommodate parts for building the space station and the Hubble telescope. However, the Dream Chaser’s design can carry close to the volume that the shuttle could, according to Lindsey. It’s built to carry up to about 12,000 pounds.
What’s more, the Dream Chaser’s wings aren’t as big as the space shuttle’s. Most of the lift is created by its underside, which is wide and flat. Lindsey explained that one benefit of what’s known as a lifting-body spacecraft is that the “g-forces,” or gravitational forces, are much lower during re-entry than on a capsule. The craft can land on a runway rather than splash down in the ocean like a capsule. Re-entry at lower gravitational forces is much easier on any science experiments on board that were performed in zero gravity, as per Lindsey.
Lockheed Martin is building the craft’s composite structure at a site in Fort Worth, Texas. The craft is made to be used up to 15 times.
The work on Dream Chaser combined with Sierra Nevada’s experience with satellite systems, propulsion and environmental control systems are helping to guide the design of what the company calls the Lunar Gateway. That project with NASA is intended as the beginning of lunar exploration or an outpost for long space trips, like a mission to Mars.
Lindsey took his last trip to space in 2011 aboard the shuttle Discovery, which also logged its last trip that mission. He was the pilot on Discovery’s 1998 trip that legendary astronaut John Glenn, at age 77, joined, making him the oldest man to fly in space.
Photo credit: Sierra Nevada Space Systems
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