Chasing the New Space Dream
With US$80 million to give it wings
by Alan Breakstone
Space and technology writer Michael Belfiore has reported on Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC)
DreamChaser
seven-seat spacecraft. SNC was one of four companies awarded development money from NASA
’s
Belfiore, like NASA
, was impressed with SNC’s capabilities and the progress already made in developing the
DreamChaser
, which will be boosted into orbit atop an Atlas V rocket. He is also correct that NASA
’s in-house Shuttle successor, Constellation, is way behind schedule and over budget, with Congress pushing Constellation more as a jobs program than as a viable next step in human spaceflight.
SNC is an aerospace and defense company with nearly 2100 employees, according to the company’s own website. As previously reported in SpaceFuture Journal (Virgin in a Three-Way Partnership) DreamChaser
is a project of SNC’s SpaceDev
subsidiary, best known for building SpaceShipOne
’s powerful hybrid rocket engine. Hobbyspace.com quotes SpaceDev
’s Mark Sirangelo as saying that over 5000 SNC components and satellites have flown in space.
NASA
is clearly impressed with that track record, giving SNC US$80 Million in CCDev seed money to continue
DreamChaser
development.
And as also reported in SpaceFuture Journal (Virgin in a Three-Way Partnership), Virgin Galactic
is also involved in the
DreamChaser
project. Even as Virgin’s suborbital SpaceShipTwo
continues flight tests, Virgin is looking at the
DreamChaser
as it seeks to expand its space tourism capabilities to low earth orbit later in this decade.
Belfiore, like NASA
SNC is an aerospace and defense company with nearly 2100 employees, according to the company’s own website. As previously reported in SpaceFuture Journal (Virgin in a Three-Way Partnership) DreamChaser
NASA
And as also reported in SpaceFuture Journal (Virgin in a Three-Way Partnership), Virgin Galactic