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Dream Chaser Damaged In Landing Accident At Edwards AFB
RocketAcademy writes "The test article for Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft suffered a landing accident on Saturday when the left main landing gear failed to deploy, causing the vehicle to flip over. NBC News quotes a Sierra Nevada engineer saying that the pilot would have walked away.
Sierra Nevada Corporation is developing the Dream Chaser to support the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo program. It is not yet known what effect the mishap will have on Dream Chaser development.
A number of rocket vehicles have suffered landing-gear mishaps in the recent past. Several years ago, concerns over spacecraft gear design led to a call for NASA to fund a technology prize for robust, light-weight landing gear concepts."
RTFA, the reporting is fine, you are doing a lousy job at reading.
It was unmanned... that is why there are no injuries.
The damage was such that if a pilot had been in there he would have been able to walk away.
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The ISS should be a private venture, as it gives no returns whatsoever.
So in other words, it shouldn't exist at all. What private company is going to embark on an endeavor with "no returns whatsoever"?
Of course, you're only talking about monetary returns. In terms of scientific value, the ISS experiments and observations have been some of the most productive projects in recent years.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
They do, but their craft space vehicles are a little hoppy for me.
With a crappy economy, record debts to China, and collapsing income, why is the US wasting its time with these boondoggles?
Because there is going to be a future to America, and at some time if you want to have a stronger economy you need to invest into technology development.
BTW, the Dream Chaser vehicle is a private venture. That some NASA funds (hence U.S. taxpayers footing the bill) may be used for its development, that isn't the only source of investment capital or even the largest source for that matter. The idea is that the Sierra Nevada Corporation is going to be using this spacecraft for both government contracts as well as private commercial spaceflight... presumably space tourism as well as launching "microsatellites" and other commercial enterprises in space. If the NASA funds were cut entirely, this vehicle development would continue.
There certainly is no reason to complain about private individuals wanting to dump money on spacecraft when many times this amount is being spent on lipstick and reality television programs. Seriously, this kind of complaining is sort of pointless and demonstrates incredible ignorance of what is even happening here.
Would the passengers also survived? Key question.
Have passengers survived crashes when landing systems didn't work properly with commercial aviation vehicles? In this regard, it is absolutely no different. Furthermore, the part that failed was something that was a standard part for military jet aircraft and would have failed with a similar landing situation (in terms of landing speed and weight of the aircraft) and would have similarly put the pilot and passengers in danger. Besides, if you RTFA you would have seen that Sierra Nevada is planning on replacing that landing sub-assembly with another landing system anyway. All this mishap has done is speed up that replacement.
What failed is already FAA certified and in fact this accident is likely going to force a grounding of other aircraft which use this same landing system. If anything, this engineering test might even save a few lives, which is sort of the point of doing engineering tests like this. Usually you learn far more with failures than you do if it is a flawless success. Because it was an engineering test, it would never have had passengers in the first place so your question is also moot. That is like asking if the engineering tests of the Boeing 777 were ever intended to have passengers?
Jebediah Kerman does this on a daily basis.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
And if he doesn't, well, we can rebuild him.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
At least they didn't say "There were no survivors".
Have gnu, will travel.