Will the Dream Chaser space plane ever fly in space?

NASA’s lunar projects relegate space planes to an almost forgotten future

After all these years, Dream Chaser, an American commercial spaceplane, is still pursuing the dream of a spacecraft capable of flying from orbit to airports.

By Tom Metcalfe edited by Lee Billings

End of last month Dream chaseran American commercial space plane, received no mention during NASA “Ignition” In-Depth Briefingwhich outlines the agency’s full plans to return to the Moon. Dream Chaser will not be part of this initiative: aerodynamic flight is of little use on Earth’s airless moon, and despite its decades of development, the spaceplane has not yet reached space. The rise of conventional reusable rockets during this period also undermined much of Dream Chaser’s theoretical usefulness, further dimming the project’s prospects. But NASA’s bold Moon-focused event offered a potential lifeline: the possibility that Dream Chaser could still one day dock with the International Space Station (ISS).

Space planes capable of flying back and forth between Earth and orbit are part of the space travel dream since the 1930s. NASA’s Space Shuttle program, which flew 135 orbital missions between 1981 and 2011, turned those dreams into reality. But the shuttle program ended after the agency deemed it too expensive and, after the Challenger And Colombia disasters, too dangerous, to continue.

Dream Chaser’s first flight to space is now scheduled for an unspecified date later this year, but the road to launch has been a very long one. NASA developed its “lifting body” concept in the 1980s. HL-20 Personal Launch System—an inexpensive alternative to the shuttle. After the shuttle program, NASA kept the spaceplane idea going, but never again on such a large scale – and, in 2004, a private company called SpaceDev picked up the HL-20 where the space agency left off. This will become the Dream Chaser project.

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Since then, development of Dream Chaser has been funded by private investment and by the Sierra Nevada Corporation, which acquired SpaceDev in 2008. NASA invested some money, however, and Dream Chaser was once a contender for crewed flights to the ISS. But over the years, as the spaceplane missed one major technical deadline after another – often because of problems with its heat shield – the dream faded.

A recent setback has been the loss of contracts for ISS resupply missions. According to Sierra Space, the division of Sierra Nevada Corporation that now operates the spacecraft, an unmanned version of Dream Chaser was to resupply the ISS at least seven times, using a detachable module to deliver up to six tons of cargo. But those plans were shelved last year as the future of the ISS was debated, and Sierra Space announced a pivot to on-orbit national defense and security applications.

Casey Dreier, a policy analyst at the Planetary Society, thinks there could be future opportunities for Dream Chaser, but that the long-awaited demonstration flight, hoped for later this year, could also be the last: “It’s a possibility,” he says.

When – or if – it finally launches, the automated version of Dream Chaser is expected to perform some maneuvers in orbit, before blasting off to a landing strip at Vandenburg Space Force Base in California, one of two locations prepared for its arrival. NASA has not responded to recent inquiries about the status of the project and Sierra Space declined to comment, although there is also no indication that the demonstration flight has been abandoned. NASA is now in the middle of return to the moonand the agency may not consider this the right time to comment on Dream Chaser.

Dreier thinks Dream Chaser will struggle without NASA support. Sierra Space has proposed that the spacecraft could be retrofitted for other tasks, including national security missions, and the relatively soft landings from Dream Chaser’s orbit would be a key selling point for delicate experiments on board. But Dreier says the Dream Chaser’s cargo space might not be suitable for many missions. However, he notes another opportunity: a bill aimed at extending the life of the ISS, maybe until 2032is making its way through the US Congress. If that comes to fruition, NASA will need to contract for additional resupply missions, and it’s possible that Dream Chaser will be selected for those, he says.

But NASA could also use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft or Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft for ISS resupply flights, both of which would cost less to launch. It is estimated cost about $90,000 to send a kilogram of cargo to the ISS by Dragon and about $130,000 by Cygnus. In theory, the automated Dream Chaser spacecraft could be cheaper – perhaps as low as $40,000 per kilogram – because it would have used its detachable module to carry more than twice as much cargo on each flight; but the numbers only worked because the automated Dream Chaser was going to resupply the ISS seven times.

NASA’s Ignition briefing in late March mentioned another idea: a “core module” attached to the ISS that would allow commercial partners to build and operate their own nascent space stations there before detaching them for independent operations when the ISS ends. Sierra Space is a big investor, alongside Blue Origin, in the project Orbital reef commercial space station, and the Dream Chaser design could be part of it. Putting the pieces together, a vision of the future would see a Dream Chaser spaceplane docking with a custom-made extension of the ISS – and perhaps, one day, a separate Orbital Reef space station.

Sierra Space has more irons in the fire than Dream Chaser. She recently announced her success in a A private funding round of $550 million strengthen its national security and defense capabilities. This is an area where spaceplane technologies can play an important role: the US Air Force already operates at least two secret space drones built by Boeing, X-37B, and China is experimenting with an uncrewed spaceplane tentatively called Shenlong (Chinese for “Divine Dragon.”) Why the Pentagon would want more spaceplanes, let alone those descended from the problem-plagued Dream Chaser, is a question for which there are no clear answers.

Still, such defense-focused concerns could keep the dream alive, for now. “In general, spaceplanes are technologically more difficult than capsules,” says space analyst Phil McAlister, who once oversaw the Dream Chaser project for NASA. But their ability to land like an airplane gives them an advantage: “If Sierra Space can demonstrate the Dream Chaser design and make it profitable, I think many commercial markets will emerge,” he says.

Aerospace consultant Amanda Simpson, however, fears the dream may be coming to an end. She says that while the idea of ​​landing at airports is appealing, spacecraft have already been performing precise soft landings on rockets for several years, although, until now, without any crew on board. And she notes that spaceplanes’ sleek wings and fuselages constitute “dead weight” in orbit, making it harder to justify the cost of launching them: “Like everything else in commercial aerospace, it has to be economical.”.»