Just over 50 years ago a high-powered Pontiac convertible charged across Rogers Dry Lakebed at Edwards AFB, Calif., towing a primitive lifting body. This month, Sierra Nevada Corp's (SNC) Dream Chaser, a descendent of the pioneering M2-F1, will repeat almost identical tests at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center as part of a program aimed at an orbital demonstration before 2017.
While the Pontiac and plywood-and-steel-built M2-F1 of 1963 have given way to a Ford truck and the advanced composite structure of the Dream Chaser, the aim of proving the viability of a lifting body for space transport is unchanged. Sierra Nevada's test comes as part of NASA's competitive Commercial Crew Program (CCP) to develop U.S. human space launch capability to low Earth orbit. It is widely viewed as providing the best chance yet for the first practical application of a design that can reenter the atmosphere and land on a runway using lift generated by the shape of the airframe rather than wings—the mode used by the space shuttle and Boeing's X-37.
Lifting-body development reached a dead end in the 1970s when the larger-scale requirements of NASA and the U.S. Air Force drove the designers of the space shuttle toward a winged reusable spacecraft. With the priority of the CCP focused on crew and smaller payloads, SNC revived NASA's HL-20 lifting-body design to develop the Dream Chaser, which is capable of carrying seven astronauts to orbit. The vehicle is designed to launch from Cape Canaveral atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 402.
Sierra Nevada is competing against alternative capsule designs developed by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Boeing under a $212.5 million Commercial Crew Integrated Capability contract awarded in August 2012. The engineering test article (ETA) arrived at Dryden in mid-May from Sierra Nevada's Space Systems facility in Louisville, Colo., and is starting initial tow tests following reassembly and integrated systems testing.
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