SNC Designs Dream Chaser Variant for Stratolaunch
Dream Chaser (Credit: Sierra Nevada Corporation)
SPARKS, Nev., Sept. 30, 2014 – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) today announced a design for an integrated system for human spaceflight that can be launched to low Earth orbit (LEO) using Stratolaunch System’s air launch architecture and a scale version of SNC’s Dream Chaser® spacecraft.
The Dream Chaser is a reusable, lifting-body spacecraft capable of crewed or autonomous flight. Dream Chaser is the only lifting-body spacecraft capable of a runway landing, anywhere in the world. Stratolaunch Systems is a Paul G. Allen project dedicated to developing an air-launch system that will revolutionize space transportation by providing orbital access to space at lower costs, with greater safety and more flexibility.
As designed, the Dream Chaser-Stratolauncher human spaceflight system can carry a crew of three astronauts to LEO destinations. This versatile system can also be tailored for un-crewed space missions, including science missions, light cargo transportation or suborbital point-to-point transportation. The scaled crewed spacecraft design is based on SNC’s full-scale Dream Chaser vehicle which, for the past four years, has undergone development and flight tests as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Chuck Beames, president, Vulcan Aerospace Corp and executive director for Stratolaunch Systems said, “Combining a scaled version of SNC’s Dream Chaser with the Stratolaunch air launch system could provide a highly responsive capability with the potential to reach a variety of LEO destinations and return astronauts or payloads to a U.S. runway within 24 hours.”
“This relationship would expand our portfolio to include the highly flexible Stratolaunch system for launching reusable crewed or uncrewed spacecraft, or for rapid satellite constellation deployment,” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of SNC’s Space Systems.
In addition to supporting development of human spaceflight capability, SNC studied satellite launch options and mechanisms, as well as point-to-point transportation options using the Stratolaunch launch system with a Dream Chaser spacecraft derivative. The Stratolaunch system is uniquely designed to allow for maximum operational flexibility and payload delivery from several possible operational sites, while minimizing mission constraints such as range availability and weather.
SNC and Stratolaunch Systems will present more detailed information on Dream Chaser-Stratolauncher at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada, on October 1, 2014 at 9:45 am ET in Room 701B.
About Stratolaunch Systems
Founded in 2011 by philanthropist and entrepreneur Paul G. Allen, Stratolaunch Systems is developing an air-launch system that will revolutionize space transportation by providing orbital access to space at lower costs, with greater safety and more flexibility. The system will allow for maximum operational flexibility and payload delivery from several possible operational sites, while minimizing mission constraints such as range availability and weather. The system is made up of three primary elements: a carrier aircraft, which is being designed by Scaled Composites; a multi-stage rocket system, which is being developed by Orbital Sciences; and an orbital payload. Initial efforts will focus on unmanned payloads, with human flights following as safety, reliability, and operability are demonstrated. Stratolaunch is based in Huntsville, Alabama with assembly facilities in Mojave, California.
About Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems business area based in Louisville, Colorado, designs and manufactures advanced spacecraft, space vehicles, rocket motors and spacecraft subsystems and components for the U.S. Government, commercial customers as well as for the international market. SNC’s Space Systems has more than 25 years of space heritage and has participated in over 400 successful space missions through the delivery of over 4,000 systems, subsystems and components. During its history, SNC’s Space Systems has concluded over 70 programs for NASA and over 50 other clients. For more information about SNC’s Space Systems visit www.sncspace.com and follow us at Facebook.com/SNCSpaceSystems.
64 responses to “SNC Designs Dream Chaser Variant for Stratolaunch”
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A “scaled version”? Smaller, crew of 3? Interesting, must process implications. Orbital joyride, plus what’s mentioned. Military missions as a replacement for X-37B? Hmmmm….
Yeah, I caught that too – from 7 passengers to 3. Quite a scale down. Based on what OSC will do with S.L, D.C. has to be scaled from 11,300 kg (25,ooo lb) to 6,100 kg (13,500 lb) . Thats a lot of weight loss.
The use of liquids should make those mass numbers lower.
Please explain
Designing and building a new airframe, even just a scaled down version, is going to take at least three more years, correct?
We were just speculating about this (a scaled version of DreamChaser for Stratolaunch) the other day, but it seemed the stuff of daydreams. It would be like the orbital version of Virgin Galactic – fantastic!
Looks like SNC is really going for it with the DreamChaser — too bad they didn’t show this kind of fight in the flight test program. Cheers to the SNC business team and all the partnerships they’ve built, and also cheers to ownership for seeing this through. I hoped SNC would get the other award alongside SpaceX, and this kind of dynamic reaction shows the energy and innovation that NASA should strive to harness.
However, all NASA really had to go on was a behind schedule program that had just changed its main propulsion system (and thus launch escape system – and how would Iiquids even work for that?) and did a grand total of one drop test which ended up with the vehicle tumbling across the desert in a crash. That just wasn’t enough for NASA to be confident everything would be working smoothly by 2017.
If they really wanted a good shot at that award, they needed, imo, to get that ship patched up and re-dropped to a fully successful landing before the CCtCap deliberations wound up.
They also needed to make the drop-dead decision on hybrids v liquids 2 years ago. Its not like they didn’t know they were heavy and underpowered etc. Making it last minute just raised their risk score wrt CC.
Yeah, that had to be huge.
And how are they going to be able to use non-hypergolic liquid engines for abort (if I understand the change correctly)? It seems like successful and on schedule development of the LAS would have become a major risk factor after the change of engine type too.
The engine type change may have been kind of a late double whammy against them.
The CST-100 uses the RS-88 for aborts and it uses LOX/ethanol, and IIRC an electrically fired GH2/GO2 torch igniter. No hypergolics.
Oh okay. I didn’t know that using liquid fuel with LOX was now well along for use in aborts.
as of now their plans are all up in the air… so it’s possible that they’d reduce the dependency on their main engines and put their launch abort system on the interstage adapter, like the HL-20 was going to do.
assuming they want to modify their airframe as little as possible, they now need to put the two tanks for fuel and oxidizer in the space where their hybrid rocket system was going to be, so they’ll have less available fuel for an abort. putting the LAS on the interstage makes some sense.
Believe me, they were fighting like hell during the whole program.
Maybe they did change the motor too late, but we won’t know if the change was a critical item until we see more documentation (if we ever do) from NASA. In any event, Orbitec came up with a replacement engine for the mains (after their vortex engines replaced the RCS) on their own time – about 3 months – and money. This is the kind of _accelerated _ development schedule that we want out of the private sector. Instead, NASA may be discouraging it. Let me note that Orbitec has been working on their fundamental engine design for many years, so it’s not like there’s a weak foundation for putting together something sized right for the Dream Chaser.
BTW, while 2017 was a _goal_ it wasn’t supposed to be a selection criterion, at least not compared to price, which was 50%. And SNC came out around $3.3 Billion, i.e. $900m less than Boeing, as they’ve indicated.
I’m sure they were working plenty hard – I see it more as a failure (imo) of strategy – instead of taking all the time required to not only repair the vehicle but to rework the test article for manned flight, I believe that they should have considered it absolutely imperative to get in an unmanned glide flight that didn’t end in a crash first.
That may have been inefficient and technically unnecessary considering they met NASA’s stated objectives of getting a good controlled glide and good data, but it left them (especially when combined with the late engine change) looking not-ready-for-prime-time — all while going up against the defending heavyweight champ, Boeing.
Imagine if NASA had cartwheeled the Enterprise on its first drop test – it would have been ugly.
Also, imagine if people had been onboard (yikes!)
Why does everybody think DC “cartwheeled” on landing?
because eyewitness reports are that it flipped over and rolled / skidded off the runway.
One can’t launch a crewed spacecraft into orbit from an aeroplane. The stratolauncher won’t really carry an Atlas V.
We shall see!
The bending loads on the rocket had to already be tremendous during horizontal flight while attached to the carrier airplane, and now they’re going to put a big mass on one end of the rocket. Sounds tricky. Strengthening the rocket would have to add weight, unless they go with a stronger, lighter material (major redesign). Such a material may well cost more though.
I guess they’ve calculated that what they have is good enough. ATK has said they’ve been working on a composite casing for their SRBs.
Are you talking about an airplane carrying an Atlas V type of rocket? Well that’s be the day. If so, then it will probably be a Tesla Motors electric airplane built entirely out of batteries and everyone’s high hopes. :-p
I thought I read that they’re going to carry a solid rocket made by ATK.
essentially, yes. the rocket is going to be custom-built by ATK Orbital, and it will be a 3 stage solid-fueled rocket approximately 120 feet long. for comparison, the Atlas V is about 191 feet long.
the carrier aircraft will be made out of two 747s put together. it will be enormous. the airframe is already under construction and the first test flight is set for 2016
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That Orbital Pegasus II is already designed to put “a big mass” of 6,100kg “on one end of the rocket”, i.e. the payload. The rest of the rocket will be 220,000kg, so the payload will only be less than 3%.
It doesn’t.need to carry an Atlas V. This DC will be installed for a crew of just 3 and much lighter. Should be within the capabilities of the Orbital Sciences Thunderbolt LV that’s designed for the Stratolaunch Roc mothership. Roc is one huge birdie.
It seems to me to be a completely different category of system, than a crewed spaceship to the ISS. The stratolauncher might be perfect for suborbital flights. But I don’t see how a mini Dream Chaser can accelerate another 25,000 kilometers per hour from there in order to get into orbit,
Maybe I’ve misunderstood this story and SNC is now scrapping the Dream Chaser and invest in a completely new kind of business instead. There are certainly some synergies between orbital and sub-orbital flight systems, but one cannot use the same spacecraft for both purposes. And one doesn’t scale down to it either, there’s no scaled down version of the space shuttle which is used like an airplane. People don’t take a mini Saturn V to go to the grocery store.
You have misunderstood the story. This is an orbital mini-DC for launch on Pegasus II; it isn’t just DC being dumped from an aircraft.
Gary Hudson begs to differ. Man, what a ride that would’ve been – being pulled from a cargo hold of a C-17 with chutes, while being attached to a CH4/LOX booster, plummeting to Earth before the ignition. That NASA didn’t include t/Space into COTS pretty much tells you everything. In the old days NASA astronauts would’ve been _the_ people to ride a stunt rocket like that.
With Allen dying, I am hoping that he will want leave more of a space legacy and keep pushing this out.
It will be as sad as losing rutan or jobs on that day.
Paul Allen is dying?
Paul Allen has been suffering with Hodgkins for many years
actually, he kicked hodgkins in the 80s (90s?). He had a different form of cancer in the 00s, and I thought something different last year or so (which would indicate that it was metastasizing ).
He is slowly losing his battle with cancer.
Like musk and rutan, it will be a blow to the world to lose him.
He made a difference.
Not only did he do the vast majority of the coding that got MS off the ground, but he is the one that caused the cable industry to carry internet; and he funded scaled composites X-prize win; now he funds strato.
Allen is an amazing man.
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Odd. I could have SWORN that I saw that he had cancer for a 3rd time about 1-1.5 years ago. However, I can not find it again. Kind of odd.
So, do not fully trust me on this.
But, I fully recall the pix of his face, and he was definitely sick at that time (nor was it a pix from his 2009-10 battle).
Wow, I had no idea he was sick. He’s really done a lot for space with the Ansari X-prize and now Stratolaunch.
He’s also helped keep basketball in Portland (and the team has now bounced back from a few rough years earlier in his ownership) and made the Hendrix museum in Seattle. i think he has a sci-fi museum too? Anyway, all exciting stuff.
if he can’t beat this, it will definitely be a loss.
Let’s hope he beats it again. For now he is here, now and ours.
Yep, this one old Left Coast liberal is cheering for the arch entrepreneruial…pofit loving… get ‘er done sprit of SNC, Spacex and Stratolaunch. And mixing with the some of the old guard who have the vision to combine forces.
Congress, Con-Mess… selfserving and short visioned. Throw in more Billions to force NASA to work on SLS… Late and out of sync…. Veh!
This is fresh air for SNC. Based on Dreamchaser technology, a new spaceship design could manage the problem with the hybrid rocket performance and vibrations from scratch. Great news.
So they are turning it into a sub-orb toy?
This is so silly. “-What are we supposed to do now that NASA didn’t want us? -Well, there’s always the stratolauncher”. It’s like in school, if you didn’t get along with one guy, you could just turn around and have a look on the handful alternatives left in your classroom. When they’ve done the strato, they’ll likely go to Bezos. Who else?
Did you read the article? ‘As designed, the Dream Chaser-Stratolauncher human spaceflight system can carry a crew of three astronauts to LEO destinations.’ Not a lot of room for interpretation there
I don’t believe it is possible. It is either madness or some misunderstanding. It would be much easier to launch a crewed orbiting spacecraft from the ground, than carrying it on an airplane and try to launch it from there. If they want to land a glider towed behind a powered airplane, sure, that’s doable, has been done for almost 100 years now. But that is not putting humans in orbit.
Other than a stage separation, this is like skylon. And as to stage sep, Pegasus 1 has done a number of them.
So what is unbelievable?
Pegasus takes less than 500 kilogram to orbit, if Wikipedia is correct. That isn’t even a small car. It is “unbelievable” to put three humans into a Pegasus kind of launch system. Especially a scaled down nice looking winged thing which chases a dream.
The benefit of Pegasus is really that it can avoid bad weather and go to launch from the equator. But an airplane adds nothing at all to the payload to orbit capacity. Only a tenth of the minimum altitude, and 4% of the necessary speed.
You’re obviously entrenched in your confusion between the different Pegasus rockets. Get a grip, dude
Stratolaunch uses a custom-built aircraft, which will be the largest aircraft by wingspan to ever fly. Its payload is 6100 kg to LEO…a bit under half of a Falcon 9’s payload. There’s nothing keeping them from putting a scaled down Dream Chaser into orbit. It’s definitely a dead-end approach, though…low-performance solids, no room for scaling up to higher payloads, dependence on giant custom aircraft, etc.
I’d love to see it actually happen! But I think it would be much more practical to launch it from the ground instead. Like putting it on top of an Atlas V or a Falcon 9. And just forgetting about that crazy airplane-thingy idea.
Well, yes. Stratolaunch is almost certainly not a practical approach to spaceflight. The Pegasus II launches 14 times the payload of the Pegasus. If it can somehow do that at *no more* than the $30-40 million a Pegasus launch costs these days, it’s still well behind the non-reusable Falcon 9, with no good prospects for cheap and fast reuse.
and yet, when SpaceX was going to do the work, they equated the stratolaunch, combined with an F5 to equal 2/3’s of the F9.
As to the altitude and speed, well, you realize that launching at the equator vs. kennedy, adds less than 200 kMPH ( ~100-110 MPH) to the speed.
And yet, you are gripping about adding 1000 kMPH (600 MPH) to the speed, AND 1/10.
Hmmmm.
Sorry, but I think that I will trust the aeronautical engineers working on this.
And I have to say that when SpaceX was launching the F1, and then grasshopper, there were many naysayers (such as the weasel that used to post on space sites blasting all of the private space and wanting America to fund Russia and Europe instead).
Now, I expect plenty of naysayers to run around on this, and in the end, I suspect that this will work just fine.
Do you seriously imagine that a crewed spacecraft could accelerate from mach 1 to mach 25 from an airplane to reach Earth orbit? If so, then I’m sorry to inform you that your imagination is unfeasible. It’s like chasing a dream. With wings.
hmmm.
First, do you expect skylon to fail as well?
Secondly, it has already happened.
SS1 already reached orbit, and it was launched from an aircraft.
I think Skylon was not a last minute make-work attempt to rescue a project when it had lost out in the competition. Tranforming Dream Chaser into a Skylon is quite surprising to me. And Skylon, hasn’t it been around for ever by now? Is it the third generation engineers who work on that today? Except for military ICBM’s, suborbital doesn’t seem to move much, does it?
I hope that ESA, Skylon and SNC can make something useful together. But launching from an airplane won’t help.
launching horizontally or vertically makes no real difference. The rocket can still turn upwards.
I’m waiting for skylon to succeed! I inherited that waiting form my father…
You might think that I am pessimistic when I say that I believe more in airships to orbit than in airplanes to orbit. And that best of all is to just blast off a big cylinder of fuel from the ground. It has the little advantage of, how to put it now, well, it works!
Problem with limit of 3 is that cost per passenger will be higher than if it was carrying 7.
What I’d like to see: a *bigger* DreamChaser on FH-R: http://www.rocketeers.co.uk…
As with everything LEO and beyond related, the most important factor is launch cost. If, in the 2020s, the cost of 10 tonnes or 7 crew to LEO is $5 million, together with a similar habitat lift capability, then the range of possible usage scenarios for space will likely change.
Dream Chaser was already behind the competition in payload, with a gentle reentry and landing being the supposed killer feature that made it competitive. The launch environment sounds rather brutal for this version, though…a little glider on the tip of a big solid rocket. And even on landing, it’ll be more subject to winds and turbulence. Then there’s the safety issues of launching people on a big solid…and the complications of abort scenarios. And air-launch has not proven to be a cheap way to launch things…rather the opposite, there isn’t a more expensive way to deliver mass to orbit. Even the Shuttle was cheaper than the Pegasus.
Summary: this seems to be throwing away what few advantages they had and adding on heaps of additional disadvantages.
I am not convinced that NASA dollars helped spacex that much. Musk would have gotten money elsewhere and IPOed.
BUT, NASA experience is a whole other issue. Without NASA help, I have no doubt that spacex would be gone.
ISTM you’ve been careful just enough. ))
When Musk pays his regards to NASA, which he does in almost every public appearance, he definitely means more than money. You make it sound all about the money. It’s not.
Just my $0.02
Likewise, I am pretty sure, and please, correct me if i am wrong here, SNC not being selected for CCtCap does not mean there will be no communication and knowledge transfer with NASA.
It’s pretty clear that some unfunded stuff will still happen with SN and NASA, yes.
SNC will get the money elsewhere. Believe me.
What is important, is the help that NASA offers.
re-read what I said.
I said that had NASA not been forthcoming with money, THEN SpaceX would have followed the Tesla path (borrow from various sources, and then IPO).
And what Musk said is that NASA’s help is what got him to where he is. He never said that their $ got him there.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for NASA. That is why I say that it was their expertise that made SpaceX, BO, L-Mart, Boeing, etc who they are. And yes, NASA has helped the old space companies as well.
I differ.
I really think that by 2020, we will have multiple space stations in LEO with more than 15 ppl total on-board.
I wrote this down. 😉
10 years, I would NEVER have made such a statement.
I have to say, that I had given up on America leading the way when I was watching the house GOP destroy NASA and esp. when they stopped private space from doing their own launches.
But between W/griffin, combined with O/Bolden, NASA has been on the right path when it comes to private space. Constellation, followed by SLS, are disasters, but private launch is about to shut down the SLS, which will lead America into BEO.
Now, we have multiple companies that are launching, and while the house GOP are still hard at work trying to destroy private space (and NASA to a degree), I think that NASA has mostly got the system going.
I am an optimist now. No doubt about it.
But, increasingly, I am underrating it. 🙂
Yeah, in a rotational symmetry about the main axis… Kerbal Space Program style.