Monday, August 27, 2012

Dream Chaser Lifting Body Spacecraft Might Fly as Early as 2015?


Here is an artist's rendition of Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser. Now if it looks somewhat familiar, yes it vaguely resembles the Shuttle, but this craft drew inspiration from the HL-20 from the 80s which was a test bed for NASA.

Dream Chaser launches like Dragon atop a booster, carrying no fuel of its' own. It will be capable of, according to the DVICE article of: ferrying up to seven people and a small amount of cargo up to the International Space Station.

NASA in betting on the system as well. The agency recently awarded $212 million from the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Space Act Agreement. With it, Sierra Nevada will be able to continue research and continue testing on the structure of a Dream Chaser prototype that has already been completed

10 comments:

Dave Tackett said...

Let's hope so. 2015 should already be a very good year for space travel/exploration with Dawn arriving at Ceres and New Horizons at Pluto. This would be a little icing on the cake.

Beam Me Up said...

Yes interesting indeed.

Hey here is something weird that I came across. It was about NASA and the Cassini probe. One of the interviewers noted that some of the equipment to test and control Cassini was really antiquated. They were told that the system comes as a whole package. If a probe was built in say the 80s then all the associated support hardware is 80s era as well! The reason is that NASA can not go out and install new hardware, so they are stuck with the same equipment that Cassini say was launched with. It is a hard thought to wrap ones mind around!

kallamis said...

Actually kind of makes sense in a way. Look at our computers now even. Nothing works on a new computer from one that is a few years older, except for the sticks of course. Even video cards are rapidly made obsolete now.
And you know, I've noticed something here as well. Every time I'm gone a couple days, this place seems to get 5 articles a day up here.

Beam Me Up said...

Oh yeah, it is almost like an insane version of Mohe's law! And you know what, more than half my computers, including the one I use during the radio show are still on XP! EVERY one of my computers are refurbished "obsolete" hardware. I often just clean them up, upgrade them and give them to people that can not afford one.

Now as for articles...lol, some days articles really get me interested and I will post away...other times...not so much. lol but it IS a conspiracy!

kallamis said...

I liked Xp better than the rest. Some of the old games wouldn't even play on Vista. (That's the comp that got kicked across the garage one day, literally). It kept crashing, so I installed Xp, and then nothing would work. Everything in there would basically only work on vista. After three days of fighting, and still not being able to even get speakers on, I got another comp, and played football once with the Vista.
Some people swear by vista, I am one of those that it hates.
I have windows 7 now, and one of the things I really hate is the defrag. It doesn't show me anything anymore. I want my smegging graph back so I can see what is happening.

Beam Me Up said...

Nope, never a bit Vista fan. Too top heavy and way to much overhead. Plus the fact that the drivers were all so proprietary that even earlier versions of windows would not work the hardware. My experience with that was an emachine that ran vista. When the drive crashed all I had was xp which installed find but even without the vista os the hardware would not run on any other os besides Vista, needless to say that unit is sitting in the corner for the kids to play on.

kallamis said...

E-machine. That is exactly what I had, and you apparently had the same problem I did. What a lovely OS that was

Beam Me Up said...

Ever open yours? When I did all I could say is...they sold this POS for how much! Not even any expansion slots! Holes where there SHOULD have been! Unbelievable.

kallamis said...

Yep exactly what I had. No way to do a thing to it. Except drop kick it of course.

Beam Me Up said...

I can understand the frustration for sure. Here I had a new card with hdmi out and I can clearly see that there are slot covers in the back...off came the cover and jaw hits the work surface! I was not a happy camper. So I put the card in my desktop, but so happens that even though it has multiple outputs, only 2 will work. yep...grrrrrrrrr