Why Has Dream Chaser Been Under Development For Decades?
For the last two decades, the Dream Chaser spaceplane has been under development and going through tests in preparation for its first test flight. While this milestone approaches, it brings up the question of why has this process taken so long and what exactly happened during this time period. As a next-generation spaceplane, Dream Chaser has a lot of future opportunities with both crew and cargo missions.
This being said, if it’s not complete and ready to fly, then its design and plan don’t necessarily mean anything. The main reasons have to do with varying test results, acquisition of companies, and funding, just to name a few. These all impacted the program over the last two decades and have kept it grounded for such a long time.
Thankfully this is set to change only months from now, unless even more delays get in the way. Here I will go more in-depth into Dream Chaser’s history, what exactly teams have been working on, what to expect in the months leading up to launch, and more.
A Busy History
Due to the fact that Dream Chaser is based on past vehicles, the spaceplane really has been worked on for much longer than just two decades. However, the modern spaceplane that is about to launch was initially announced all the way back in 2004. At that time it was run by a company named SpaceDev. The company was not the biggest and in October 2008, SpaceDev and Dream Chaser were acquired by the Sierra Nevada Corporation for US$38 million.
Already since being announced in 2004, the four initial years were filled with varying work and an acquisition from a larger company. A few years after the acquisition and the company started making some progress. In 2010, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded $20 million in seed money under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) phase 1 program for the development of the Dream Chaser. SNC completed the four planned milestones on time.
After receiving some initial funding to work on the project, Sierra Nevada proposed Dream Chaser for the CCDev phase 2 solicitation by NASA in 2010, with an estimated project cost of less than $1 billion. By early the next year, NASA awarded another $80 million to Sierra Nevada Corporation for Dream Chaser.
As far as physical progress, 8 years after the official announcement, SNC stated that it had completed the assembly and delivery of the primary structure of the first Dream Chaser flight test vehicle. In addition to this good news, the company also had completed all 11 of its CCDev milestones that were scheduled up to that point. SNC stated in a press release that it was “on time and on budget.
That same year, the Dream Chaser Engineering Test Article (ETA) was lifted by a helicopter in a captive carry test to better determine its aerodynamic properties. The next year it was shipped to the Dryden Flight Research Center in California for a series of ground tests and aerodynamic flight tests. A second captive carry flight test was completed on 22 August 2013.
This was the start of some program delays due to testing. Only a few months after these initial tests, the first free-flight occurred. The test vehicle was released from the helicopter and flew the correct flightpath to touchdown less than a minute later. Just prior to landing, the left main landing gear failed to deploy resulting in a crash landing. The vehicle skidded off the runway in a cloud of dust, but was found upright with the crew compartment intact and all systems inside still in working order.
It would be close to another 4 years before this exact test would be attempted again. In this case, in 2017, the Dream Chaser ETA was released from an altitude of 3,700 m and successfully landed at Edwards AFB. The time between was spent repairing the same test article that crashed named Eagle. In reality, for years now there have continued to be delays with this launch vehicle. Most recently the launch scheduled to happen in only two months was pushed back to December of this year. Specifically, NASA updated its internal schedule to show that the spaceplane will now berth to the International Space Station no earlier than December 17, 2023. Another push back that follows a pattern over time. Hopefully, this will be the last, and Dream Chaser lifts off for the first time late this year.
NASA Contracts
The spaceplane also has a long history with NASA and a few missed opportunities that no doubt have affected its history. For example in 2014, NASA did not select the Dream Chaser for CCtCap, the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program. This occurred despite previous Commercial Crew Development awards in every phase since 2009, due to lack of maturity. Soon after this decision, Sierra Nevada filed a protest to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Months later, a Federal Judge ruled the contract awards to Boeing and SpaceX valid, allowing NASA to proceed.
Despite not being selected to continue forward under NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of the effort to send crews to orbit via private companies, SNC completed the milestones assigned under earlier phases of the CCP. By late December, details had emerged that “a high-ranking agency official” the agency’s top human exploration official and the one who made the final decision”—”opted to rank Boeing’s proposal higher than a previous panel of agency procurement experts.” More specifically, Sierra Nevada asserted in their filings with the GAO that this individual may have “overstepped his authority by unilaterally changing the scoring criteria.” Once again SNC and Dream Chaser were challenging NASA and focusing on fighting for the contract.
Similar to the last attempt, in 2015, the GAO denied Sierra Nevada’s CCtCap challenge, stating that NASA made the proper decision when it decided to award Boeing $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion to develop their vehicles. Obviously now in 2023, this decision could be argued heavily in favor of Dream Chaser which is doing well while the Starliner Spacecraft cant stop running into issues. At the time, Ralph White, the GAO’s managing associate counsel, announced that NASA “recognized Boeing’s higher price but also considered Boeing’s proposal to be the strongest of all three proposals in terms of technical approach, management approach and past performance, and to offer the crew transportation system with most utility and highest value to the government.” Furthermore, the agency found “several favorable features” in SNC’s proposal “but ultimately concluded that SpaceX’s lower price made it a better value.” If NASA could go back and pick again we would likely see Dream Chaser and the Crew Dragon picked but this was not the case.
Finally, in 2016, NASA announced that Dream Chaser had been awarded one of the CRS-2 contracts and committed to purchasing a minimum of six resupply missions to the ISS. Years later completion of NASA’s Integrated Review Milestone 5 (IR5) confirmed that development was still on schedule. In 2019, SNC announced the first ISS flight of the Dream Chaser, known as SNC Demo-1, was planned for 2021. However, on November 17, 2020, SNC announced it would be delayed until early 2022.
This leads us to today with Dream Chaser Tenacity, the test article set to launch, finishing tile application, and various tasks. The plan is to ship the spaceplane soon for final testing before integrating the spacecraft on top of ULA’s Vulcan. This could cause even more delays in the coming months depending on a few factors.
All this being said, new vehicles like Dream Chaser are bound to run into some complications over time. While the Space Shuttle completed over 100 missions decades ago, Dream Chaser is different in many ways. Sierra Space envisions a commercial future for the spaceplane and more than just missions to the ISS. Around this time last year, the company announced the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The agreement added the New Mexico spaceport to Sierra Space’s portfolio of potential global landing sites for its Dream Chaser.
In this case, Spaceport America, located in southern New Mexico, is the most recent addition to a growing list of compatible runways worldwide where the Dream Chaser could land, including the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and airports and landing sites in Huntsville, Alabama, Oita Airport, Japan, and Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom. At the time, Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice commented, “Sierra Space is building the future of space – from transportation, to commercial space destinations and all of the emerging applications – to develop a vibrant, growing and accessible commercial space economy. With that vision in mind, we are creating space-tech hubs within the commercial space ecosystem and adding Spaceport America as a prospective landing site for Dream Chaser to continue to open up affordable access to space for all.”
Conclusion
Sierra Space ran into a few different complications along the path toward Dream Chaser’s first flight. Even today the company is continuing to experience delays. While not ideal, the vehicle has been making progress and is closer now to launching than ever before. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.