Sierra Nevada Selected by DoD to Design, Develop Unmanned Orbital Outpost Prototype
Proposed Design Leverages Existing Commercial Tech to Achieve Savings in Cost, Schedule
SPARKS, Nev., July 14, 2020 (Sierra Nevada PR) – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security leader owned by Eren and Fatih Ozmen, was awarded a contract to repurpose SNC’s Shooting Star transport vehicle as a proposed commercial solution for an Unmanned Orbital Outpost – essentially a scalable, autonomous space station for experiments and logistics demonstrations – by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). SNC’s Shooting Star transport vehicle serves as the core structure for the proposed design.
The versatility of the Dream Chaser spaceplane and Shooting Star technologies and subsystems allow for greater flexibility and modularity both internally and externally for orbital outpost mission requirements. For DIU, this design leverages commercial programs and private investment at a fraction of the cost and schedule of building government-owned and operated systems. Repurposing space hardware reduces the time to achieve a minimal operating capability, orbital debris and the cost of launching dedicated buses to support subsequent mission requirements.
“We’re excited by the multi-mission nature of Shooting Star,” said SNC CEO Fatih Ozmen. “It was originally developed for NASA resupply missions to the International Space Station, and since then we keep identifying new capabilities and solutions it offers to a wide variety of customers. The possible applications for Shooting Star are really endless.”
Shooting Star is a 16-foot attachment to Dream Chaser developed for NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) missions to provide extra storage for payloads and to facilitate cargo disposal upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. However, the transport vehicle’s unique design also offers free-flyer and satellite capabilities for large payloads with high-power capacity. It can also support logistics services to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and cislunar destinations.
“The current Shooting Star is already designed with significant capabilities for an orbital outpost and by adding only a few components we are able to meet Department of Defense (DoD) needs.” said former NASA space shuttle commander and retired USAF pilot Steve Lindsey, now senior vice president of strategy for SNC’s Space Systems business area. “We are proud to offer our transport vehicle to DoD as a free-flying destination for experimentation and testing, expanding beyond its current payload service capabilities for Dream Chaser cargo missions.”
The proposed orbital outpost will be initially established in LEO with guidance, navigation and control for sustained free-flight operations to host payloads and support space assembly, microgravity, experimentation, logistics, manufacturing, training, test and evaluation. Future outposts may be based in a variety of orbits including, medium-Earth orbit, highly elliptical orbit, geosynchronous Earth orbits (GEO) to include GEO transfer orbits, and cislunar orbits.
For more information, visit www.SNCorp.com.
About Sierra Nevada Corporation
Owned by Chairwoman and President Eren Ozmen and CEO Fatih Ozmen, SNC is a trusted leader in solving the world’s toughest challenges through best-of-breed, open architecture engineering in Space Systems, Commercial Solutions, and National Security and Defense. SNC is recognized among The Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Space, as a Tier One Superior Supplier for the U.S. Air Force and is the only aerospace and defense firm selected as a 2020 US Best Managed Company. For nearly 60 years, SNC has delivered state-of-the-art civil, military and commercial solutions including more than 4,000 space systems, subsystems and components to customers worldwide, and participation in more than 450 missions to space, including to Mars.
16 responses to “Sierra Nevada Selected by DoD to Design, Develop Unmanned Orbital Outpost Prototype”
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Pretty cool – kinda similar to the never-realised ‘Dragon Lab’ idea.
Also, although in this case not in a commercial use, the nation continues to reap benefits from the Commercial Cargo program beyond what was called for in the original contracts
My thoughts exactly. As I was reading that I was asking myself why a Dragon with it’s trunk, and of course new solar arrays , can’t do the same thing? Dragon XL seems to me would be a perfect fit for this job. Perhaps it’s an indication the military wants the compatible dream chaser that goes along with it?
this is wonderful. SpaceX, OSC (Grumman innovative solutions) and now SNC have spin offs in work of their commercial crew/cargo products…second the USAF/Space patrol has figured out that at least right now humans in space are the useless ingredient to have a space future…if this gets funded…wow
and now once Trump is gone …to reorient US NASA policy
So it’s a man tended orbital laboratory. I assume they’ll be swapping out instruments and other onboard hardware. Perhaps the economics of having a astronaut come up and swap out hardware is a savings over design, build, and launch of a new instrument package with a totally new support bus as well. With Space X pricing and operations tempo, I might start believing that.
I’ve been following what the USAF is doing with the X37 as much as possible…and it seems pretty clear to me that they are working on a plan and an infrastructure to 1) make platforms reusable 2) make them serviceable and 3) maintain as high a level of automation as possible.
the problem with the “battlestar galactica” things like the current optical recon birds is that due to physics they are massive (Hubble sized) and long lived but that means their optical image technology wears out before the satellite does, the thing is cost replaceable and usually before other failures take the bird down
what this would seem to confirm is that they are looking for a pretty good sized platform to do on orbit experiments of large devices (bigger then X37 cargo bay) with some sort of platform that is serviceable by humans most likely remotely through robotic devices
I dont know what they are doing in the secret programs…but the Mars rover uses a 200mhz device as its processor
Well the orig
Large Orbiting Telescope concept as proposed in the late 60’s and early to late 70’s, sounds like it would fit this concept very well. Robotic tending of very large aperture space telescopes is a good logical next step. Perhaps people will have a role to play should totally robotic approaches have issues.
Andrew the KEY to a successful human space flight program is to reposition humans inthe correct place in the exploration loop
if they find Amelia E’s plane it will not be deep sea divers in hard suits but robots managed by people on the boat, when they work on oil rigs beneath the sea they are robots managed by people on the rig. it is ludicrious to think that one sends people in space suits to look for ice on the moon.
Sending people is an artificial need totally manufactured by ourselves. However we do come to the game with some advantages over robots, esp considering many robotic capabilities have yet to be developed for space operations. Go back thru your Hubble servicing flights and I think you’ll see some tasks that would have been quite challenging for even a human controlled remote robot. I think the window of usefulness of humans will be predicated on the ready means of conducing human flights vs unavailability of robotic systems, or problem sets beyond the capability of robotic systems. To this day the capabilities of humans to do work in orbit is far in excess of what we know how to do with robots. From my point of view, space based robotic systems are very much in their infancy. The Canadarm is the only mature system. I think waiting for remote manipulation to be THE main means of manipulating objects and doing work in space is a bit like invoking Starship as the solution of everything for space launch. If the systems are developed, yes, you’re right. But right now I see the human transport, and human systems for doing work in space as being much more mature. I think there is a window where humans will come out as a winner.
Andrew..Legacy systems designed to be maintained by people usually do not switch over to robots…if we were going to develop systems that are maintained by robots in space we would do what the oil industry (and the airplane industry is doing now) and design both the device and the robots as a system
this is what inmy view the USAF is doing with the X37 and is where this “thing” is going.
what most are hving a hard time with across the board is that “humans” are not the best things now for “tip of the spear” devices in most systems. we might “assasinate” a single person with a human, but really that person is more or less amachine as they are expendable. what we are developing these days is expendable robots which do specific jobs with humans “somewhere else” in the loop ((like in the command center)
the USN is having a hard time with this in piloted airplanes…but its coming. my daughter will likely be the last generation of people who well are onthe tip of the spear in terms of combat ops…and she will see it go out
when we go back to the Moon what you will see is not as in the Mars geo thing where humans are out Apollo style doing this or that…but where they are controlling robots from the space ship\
I don’t disagree in principle. I think we only disagree to the immediacy. Developing the technological base for robotic colonization and robotic combat operations on Earth or off, is proceeding pretty slow. Look at the gradualism that’s occurring in the air combat concepts. Even the first big push from the Global War on Terror ™ gave very limited results. Now the second wave with the “loyal wingman” approach is even conceptually quite limited. I do agree, your daughter has about 20 years left. I’d conjecture that as air combat is robotized new concepts that will be revealed during operations are going to pop up and require people to bridge a gap. Robotic combat systems derive largely from PGM’s and they had an evolution that started in WWII with Tv guided bombs, then laser guided bombs in Vietnam, then a long period of operations evolution and technology consolidation in the 70’s and 80’s before enough of an ecosystem was created for the revolution of the 90’s. Revolutions usually have a lot of evolution occur as a set up.
I think it’s a question of timing and technological systems. Humans have a very capable tool kit of human space operations built up over the STS, ISS, Mir, and Salyut. Those tools are available now, the robot colonizer machines do not exist and I would argue their evolutionary precursors don’t either. If you made an argument that they do but live in other industrial niches, well … that would be a good argument. Also the problems of robotic colonization are not going to be addressed until we start colonizing. I don’t see the process starting off without people. And like air combat as robotic colonizing evolves, I expect niches to open up or even be reinforced for the role of people.
We’ll grow older in interesting times.
three points Andrew
first human operations in space is almost non affordable. I think that they should go up and fix and modernize Hubble but in the end doing so would ccost a significant chunk of launching it anyway. I think all the shuttle missions cost more then launching a new one
second. the USAF/space patrol has no human bias to deal with. the dronemovement in the USN and USAF aviation is making slow process because the institutional bias is toward humans in the cockpit. its hard to get over that (as it is at NASA no buck no buck rogers) but in any event they dont have that at “space patrol”. the bias is actually toward uncrewed vehicles like X37…and that will put them in better stead as they get robots of increasing capability
three…the days of human exploration of space, in space suits doing “walking on the moon one day” stints is over. the cost are to high,the returns to little and really no one cares . there are no colonies going to happen. really that is a musk and space fan fantasy
we do grow older in interesting times. my 10 year old has programmed her drone (its a big one 2X 2 meters) to cruise the ranch property line and detect movement on the fence line 🙂
I think we’ve articulated two believable trajectories for the path forward. Let’s see how things pan out.
Your daughters software skills sound pretty cool. What software platforms is she using? I’m imagining a tool kit in Python running as on rasberry pi?
As for human operations costs. Does anyone have a operations cost for the Dragon flight being conducted right now? We’re going to know over the next year what the real cost of the US conducting a manned flight is. I think the costs will come to be close to satellite flight plus the costs of developing the systems for the flight. I expect that there will be times when it’s cost competitive to send up an operational spacecraft like a Dragon 2 with a crew of specialists to do a job, then to develop a robot, build it, launch it, and operate it. I think that will be esp true if the task is a one off, or only needs to be done a few times. If the task needs to be done on a reoccurring basis, then yes of course you go robotic. But the humans might turn out to be integral in developing what the operations will be. Let’s see how the numbers pan out over the next year. If it turns out to be about 100 mil per sortie, I think we’re going to see manned operations work their way into special needs operations.
The article says unmanned in several places.
one more point. if they fly this. is clear that they want DC as well…it is their easy road to human tended facilities
yes