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Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser Could Land At Ellington Space Port Near Houston
MarkWhittington writes Despite having been rejected in NASA's commercial crew program, Sierra Nevada has been very busy trying to develop its lift body spacecraft, the Dream Chaser. Having rolled out a smaller, cargo version of the spacecraft for the second round for contracts for commercial cargo to the International Space Station, the company has amended the unfunded Space Act Agreement with NASA to add a closeout review milestone that would help transition the Dream Chaser from the preliminary design review to the critical design review step. Finally, Sierra Nevada announced a new agreement on Tuesday with the Houston Airport System to use Ellington Spaceport as a landing site for the cargo version of the Dream Chaser.
Ok, speaking as someone who a) works for a major aerospace company, b) is involved with the ISS program and c) lives here in Clear Lake, there are some major benefits to landing at Ellington Field. First off, you're right down the road from the Johnson Space Center, which means anything you're bringing back down from the ISS you'll be able to deliver right to NASA or the primary contractor (which is Boeing, which sits right next to Ellington Field). So you save time and transportation costs by delivering it right there.
Second, Ellington Field's approach line is over a lot of open land. If NASA, the Air Force and the Navy uses the base for jet flights (not to mention being a drone launching site), then landing an arriving lifting body from space won't be as much of a problem. The plans for Ellington Field's space facilities was to also have launches, but you take what you can get and this is really the first company willing to commit to them.
Third, you've got the ability to route to alternate landing fields (Hobby Field, Sugar Land Regional) if there is an issue on approach.
Frankly, this does look like it'll be an interesting event if they manage to win the resupply contract.