NASA Awards Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser an ISS Commercial Resupply Contract (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The Verge reported that NASA has awarded the second round of contracts for the commercial resupply program. Two companies, SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences, which have been hauling cargo to the International Space Station in the first phase of the program, will receive contracts to fly at least six flights each to the ISS through 2024, the anticipated end of operations year for the space station. But Sierra Nevada has also gotten a six flight commitment, using a cargo version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft.

Comments

Re:Horray for spaceships that fly!

[sconeu]

WTF are you talking about?

The second failure was due to the sidemount configuration, with a foam impact on the leading edge of the wing.

This is a topmount configuration, so there's no chance of that.

Re:Essentially a ULA contract?

[cbhacking]

Rockets cost a lot of money, but spacecraft aren't cheap, either. Dragon, Cygnus, and Dream Chaser (assuming it ever goes anywhere) are major R&D costs, plus a bunch of complicated engineering to manufacture.

As for launchers, Dream Chaser may currently be slated to fly on Atlas V, but Falcon Heavy (or something else) could end up taking that role. By the time Dream Chaser is operational, Atlas V may well no longer be the best option in its weight class.

Also, for something that needs a pretty heavy booster, the Dream Chaser cargo capacity is miserable. I suppose that's not surprising, given the weight cost of its chosen landing mechanism, but it does make me wonder *why* they chose that mechanism.