Discussion
Well it seems they did the ALT-2 test yesterday...
"SNC is proud to announce the Dream Chaser® spacecraft had a successful free-flight test today at Edwards Air Force Base, with support of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. The Dream Chaser had a beautiful flight and landing!
On Monday we will share more information, photos and video from today's flight test."
"SNC is proud to announce the Dream Chaser® spacecraft had a successful free-flight test today at Edwards Air Force Base, with support of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. The Dream Chaser had a beautiful flight and landing!
On Monday we will share more information, photos and video from today's flight test."
Caruso said:
I presume this was an autonomous landing?
YesFull press release is here https://www.sncorp.com/press-releases/snc-dream-ch...
Beati Dogu said:
Early sixties so more like 50 odd years of no real progress. Not that that makes dream chaser a bad thing, just overdue. Well I meant between the two, but yes. That too.
Dream Catcher's most recent descendant is NASA's HL-20 "Horizontal Lander 20". They're the same basic dimensions too.
They built some scale models for wind tunnel testing and in 1990, this full size mock up to work out the internal layout:
I didn't amount to anything and further research was ended in 1991.
It was itself a investigation into the Soviet BOR-4 lifting body spacecraft. Although they were flying half-scale models of this in the early 80s to test heat protection tiles for their Buran shuttle programme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-20_Personnel_Laun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOR-4
Dream Catcher's most recent descendant is NASA's HL-20 "Horizontal Lander 20". They're the same basic dimensions too.
They built some scale models for wind tunnel testing and in 1990, this full size mock up to work out the internal layout:
I didn't amount to anything and further research was ended in 1991.
It was itself a investigation into the Soviet BOR-4 lifting body spacecraft. Although they were flying half-scale models of this in the early 80s to test heat protection tiles for their Buran shuttle programme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-20_Personnel_Laun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOR-4
Here's a close up video of it that Sierra Nevada Corp have released:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&...
It's daft that they got a cargo resupply contract from NASA for the ISS, but not a crew contact.
The whole point of a winged spacecraft is it can get people down cleanly and quickly and avoid having to fish them out of the Pacific covered in puke. Especially now they've pulled propulsive landings from the Crew Dragon.
The whole point of a winged spacecraft is it can get people down cleanly and quickly and avoid having to fish them out of the Pacific covered in puke. Especially now they've pulled propulsive landings from the Crew Dragon.
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