Setback for Dream Chaser (Update)
Keith’s note: SNC is having a media telecon tday at 11:30 am EDT. Follow @NASAWatch for tweets. Note that the video ends just before landing. Odd. You can see that the left gear was not deploying properly.
Keith’s update: According to SNC’s Mark Sirangelo the Dream Chaser flight on Saturday achieved 99% of what was planned. The prime purpose was to see if the vehicle would fly. It did – perfectly. This was the first test of a lifting body since the 1970s. As the landing gear deployed, the left side gear did not deploy properly. The vehicle could not compensate and skidded off of the runway ending up on its side. There was no damage to the interior of the cabin. Sirangelo said that this incident showed SNC just how strong their vehicle is. This specific vehicle was only supposed to have two drop tests before being reworked to perform orbital flight. SNC is looking into what the new plan will be for this specific vehicle. Sirangelo said that they got most of the data that they needed and that this incident will not really affect their testing plans.
Dream Chaser Suffers Anomaly During Testing
“Less than a minute later, Dream Chaser smoothly flared and touched down on Edwards Air Force Base’s Runway 22L right on centerline. While there was an anomaly with the left landing gear deployment, the high-quality flight and telemetry data throughout all phases of the approach-and-landing test will allow SNC teams to continue to refine their spacecraft design.”
Had OV-101 crashed on it’s first free flight, would the STS program have pressed on or would it never had ever existed? Food for thought….. If this was the FTA and the damage it too severe to repair, I wonder if the ETA can be modified for future testing.
Here’s to hoping SNC pushes on and the Dream Chaser becomes a reality.
Yes, They should carry on but they have a shoestring budget. Hopefully NASA will not cut funding but rather increase it for Dream Chaser. Once the other commercial capsules begin operation though, keeping it funded is going to be a challenge.
This is the vehicle NASA should have built 30+ years ago rather than the Shuttle. They should have been permitted to complete the remaining moon missions, launch Skylab B and use Saturn to land Moon Rovers. A logical step after lunar rovers would have been machinery operated remotely from earth to build/install a habitat. Such a Lunar habitat with eventual launch of a manned lunar mission to the habitat would have been a pathfinder for a manned Mars mission. By the mid to late 90s, development of a manned Mars mission would have commenced.
I couldn’t agree more. Another thing we have Nixon to thank for.
LBJ killed funding for Apollo beyond Apollo 20 in his FY1968 budget. Nixon simply refused to reverse that decision, and probably would have had trouble getting a hostile Congress to agree to it anyway. Mondale and Proxmire, etc. were among the loudest Apollo critics, and Nixon was never going to expend political capital on a program he saw as Kennedy’s legacy.
Gee, I don’t remember Apollos 18 thru 20. Who killed them? Hint: starts with “N.”
Apollo 20 was canceled by NASA in January 1970 when Nixon refused to reverse LBJ’s termination of Apollo at 20. Apollo 20 was canceled to free its Saturn V to launch SkyLab.
Apollos 18 and 19 were canceled in September 1970 by NASA because the Apollo 13 accident had pushed their launch dates until after the 1973 SkyLab program, or into 1974, where they would have bumped up against Shuttle funding, infrastructure transition, etc. And with no hope of restarting Apollo production, Shuttle was then firmly NASA’s future.
Sounds repairable. Too bad someone did not have a web cam for a live shot. An important test. I would think NASA would cover it live. It does land at 200mph, but I doubt this glider does. Probably not a true test of survivability. Is that a NASA news conference Tues. ?
They tested the landing gear in the air. I read that the gear failed when a load was put on it. Also a gear door. They did do a drop test I hope. NASA and SNC are so secretive, we do not know. If they would show all like SpaceX, somebody might catch a problem. I hope this is not much of a delay.
I read that this may be the only test. It may be enough to pay them the milestone payment. It flew nicely. That is all this glider tells them. They are building the orbiter. Next test will be a pad abort. Maybe the spy cam can be raised on a pole again at the Cape. NASA can show pretend space like the moon buggy race, but can’t show a real space flight. I see no reason for the secrecy. If SNC wants that, ok, but NASA is funded by tax payer money. Obama, Bolden, Gerst., Sefridinni might have wanted to see the test too.
The best time for these things to happen is during preflight testing such as this. It can be analyzed, fixed, and be one less thing to worry about. I’m sure this will end up being a valuable event to the SNC team.
Keith, pull your sources and find us a picture!!!!
Or, better yet, a video.
I think we are now in a era especially for commercial space where they don’t release any candid photos or realtime video. Particularly any visuals that shows accidents and faults. Unlike Soviet Russia, NASA used to show everything realtime including HSF missions that resulted in fatalities.
While I’d love to see the footage eventually, I think they’re right to hold back. They know the media would fixate only on the error/damage, and the industry is so precarious right now there’s no reason to invite that kind of sensationalism.
Precisely. While I would like to see the video too, chances are it will be misused by someone… (late night comedy, Daily Show, etc) take it out of context and probably blame NASA for the “crash”. Sigh.
Yup. It’s unrealistic to expect everything to operate perfectly the first time. To paraphrase an old slogan of aircraft manufacturers: Build, fly, crash, learn, rebuild, fly better.
However, we could do with a little less down-selection pressure from Congress, especially after this–which The Great Minds of The House are apt to misinterpret.
Hopefully they won’t use this minor failure as an excuse to either cut funding or let the company go broke. Amongst everything that’s happening in aerospace currently, Dream Chaser remains unique — the sole “commercial” space plane in a field of capsules. For this reason alone I think it should be funded and encouraged.
The demonstrated unique capabilities of the Shuttles and the X-37’s should make it obvious, even to a Congress person, that a space plane option should be pursued. It’s simple eggs and baskets logic.
Considering that SNC appears to have done considerably less major flight testing than the other contenders, the fact that they had only the one (reported) anomaly is actually quite impressive.
Agree. Was this the first actual drop test? And it flew and approached landing smoothly on the centerline autonomously, but crashed due to landing gear failure? It sounds like they can count a lot of this as success which makes me happy, but they need to make repairs and fix the landing gear for next time.
What exactly do “wheels on a runway” give you that, say, propulsive landing on a concrete pad does not?
There’s more to it than just the landing method, such as the possibilities in how it can be reshaped or resized with further development. The reusability element alone is enough to want to see it developed. But the landing aspect is important since it can land on a long runway anywhere and ATC will be available (deserts are just for testing). I’m all in favor of making all rocket stages and capsules reusable, too, but you can’t land either one of them (without endangering people) in nearly as many places as a space plane.
The ability to land at locations which are not near the launch site is only truly useful in abort situations or in situations where weather causes a diversion. The one example the US has had to date, the space shuttle, had an extremely limited number of available landing sites (three, with one of those used only once). The fact that the shuttle had to sometimes land at Edwards Air Force Base cost NASA time and money every time they had to do it. It would have been better to land closer to KSC than Edwards, so the fact that this was never done says something, does it not?
For a reusable launch vehicle, the ability to land as close as possible to the launch site is a distinct advantage. The ability to land elsewhere might be nice, but the devil is in the details, like how do you transport it back to the launch site after such a landing? How much time and money would such a contingency landing cost?
I forgot to add the fact that since so much of the earth’s surface is covered with water that “spashdowns” in the ocean would seem, at first glance, to provide “far more landing sites” than even runways. But again, the devil is in the details. Landing (or splashing down) safely is only part of the problem.
I acknowledge your points, but I don’t consider the Shuttle as a good yardstick for measuring anything. It was the Queen Mary when we needed a 30-foot yacht. Also, I think you have to consider the whole picture, not just a possible abort. And I think spacecraft and launch vehicles are two separates sets of requirements and shouldn’t be mixed into the same argument.
If a mission is going to use a capsule, then your logic seems sound to me, but ideally the type of spacecraft used should reflect the requirements of the “mission,” not just what’s already available.
As we work more towards more affordable space flight, I think capsules will disappear in favor of something more flexible, reusable and economical, and the current space plane concepts, I think, are the stepping stones to that something. Capsules are reaching the limits of their capabilities; they can perhaps be made slightly bigger, and slight more functional, and in theory be made slightly cheaper and lighter, but there are no more significant improvements that can be made to their functional capabilities. It’s time to look at moving on.
Agreed about the space shuttle. A single data point is a horrible way to support an argument and I was hesitant to even bring it up.
But, I’ve got to disagree with you when you say of capsules that “there are no more significant improvements that can be made to their functional capabilities”. I think that propulsive landing of a capsule near the launch site could be a very significant improvement to a capsule.
The one argument that lifting bodies might have going for them is the cross-range argument. Significant cross-range is useful for those situations when returning to earth *now* is necessary, otherwise waiting for a favorable landing opportunity costs only time and consumables. A capsule which lands via propulsion can increase its cross-range by adding more fuel, oxidizer, and tankage to the design. It’s not clear to me whether a lifting body or capsule is superior in this case.
I do, however, think that competition is a good thing. That’s one of the things that NASA has gotten right with “commercial cargo” and “commercial crew”. Compared to a single source contract, just meeting the requirements isn’t good enough anymore. Now companies need to come up with a better system than the competition. Competition will surely pay dividends in the long run and will hopefully, eventually, shed some light on the lifting body versus capsule debate.
I would agree with you in a heartbeat about the propulsive landing of a capsule if I thought it was a real possibility, but I just can’t see it. To the best of my knowledge, every single capsule ever flown has at at least one point in its design and development had to go through a weight reduction redesign.
The amount of mass that would have to be added to a capsule to do this — plus the fuel and oxidizer for it — I think would be a real problem, until we’re using something other than rockets. Consider, you’d have to haul it for the entire trip and it seriously shifts your mass distribution and CofG, making for major redesign.
In theory, you could just use a bigger LV, but in practice it never seems to work out that way. Also, it would drive the cost way up at a time when bringing costs down is a main driver.
I’m a big fan of non-repeat redundancy (redundancy using different systems, not just two of the same thing). So, I’m inclined to prefer spacecraft that have an aerodynamic default attitude, which you don’t get with a capsule until the main ‘chutes are reefed and inflated, and you don’t really get with a space plane at all, so the capsule wins on that count. But a well-designed space plane has user-controlled attitude control as soon as you start biting air, whereas a capsule has none.
I’m sure capsules are going to be with us for a while to come yet, but they are the past and the present, not the future. All of this, of course, is just my opinion.
Errr, I think Jeff’s point is that this is how Dragon-Crew is going to land.
I’m a SpaceX fan, but I still say I’ll believe it when I see it, because the issue is not as simple as: if it can land on it’s rockets (propulsively), it can land almost anywhere. Any such capsule is only going to be landing (hopefully) where it has been allowed to land, and that will be in designated, properly prepared locations only. Either safety reasons or the damage done to the landing area by the rockets and the mass of the capsule will be enough to get everybody saying, not in my back yard!. I’d be very surprised if this is not the case. Anything in the way of a rocket-based lander that doesn’t present this problem won’t lift enough mass from Earth’s surface to be of any use.
Jeff’s point was that a capsule would be improved if it had the ability to land propulsively “near the launch site.” Landing it anywhere else he left as an open issue (if I understood him correctly). So I think the space plane is still the better choice in the landing-more-places issue, and I suspect Dragon will only be propulsively landing where the approved mission plan designates.
Everything seems to point to what John Campbell said so long ago: we won’t be exploring the solar system in person until something better than rockets is available.
Helicopter, truck? Same way they transport it now. This is a wee little spaceplane.
From the point of view of abort planning, a capsule is vastly superior to a spaceplane. Both
Dragon and CST-100 can land almost anywhere without killing anyone on the capsule or the ground (or water). Even minimal controllability will assure that dense urban areas are avoided and both capsules can land within a very small target area if they are fully functional. Moreover a launch abort often involves landing on water, not feasible without a parachute (which could be added to DC but at significant mass penalty).
Runway landing does appear to permit greater reusability and lower turnaround cost, and I’m all for it if it can be done. But it’s not the only choice.
Agreed, it’s not the only choice, and each choice has its advantages and disadvantages.
I think abort capability for a space plane is doable, but no one has yet invested in it. The Shuttle was just too big and too new to consider it at that time. Unlike the traditional capsule method of adding hardware to the capsule, I suspect that adding abort capability to a space plane launch will actually be done by adding hardware to the last LV stage as well, but that’s just my guess.
I don’t disagree with anyone’s comments on this except in one respect — your logic seems to presume that we’ll continue doing things they way we have for half a century, whereas I prefer to think about how things have to change if we are ever going to get out of the hole we’ve been stuck in. Capsules will eventually disappear from use and the different space plane concepts are the transition phase to what will end up replacing capsules as the standard spacecraft.
Currently, our biggest anchor holding us in place is the big aerospace companies and their quarterly reports. They would rather keep building slightly better versions of last year’s model than innovate or experiment with newer concepts. Fair enough; business is business. But the governments and their space agencies, I believe, should be working more towards the future and let industry launch today’s payloads. That’s why programs like COTS make so much sense (along with the SAAs, of course).
Try to imagine where we’d be today if the X-15A program had been continued instead of us getting into a political space race. I suspect that the only capsules around would be escape capsules from much larger spacecraft and space stations, exactly like the first Star Wars movie. Instead of moving forward one step at a time, we persist in repeating the same step over and over, the Shuttle being the only attempt to break out of the pattern.
I wish to take nothing away from all the wonderful things that have been done, but we’ve been moving forward at a snail’s pace, and we can’t blame it all on either safety or money. Just my opinion.
Of course they have a video. But this is a private company, and they do not have to share with the public.
I expect that the Sierra Nevada team was ecstatic after the flight and rightfully so. From all indications it flew exactly as planned. I can only imagine the relief that they felt that the only thing that went wrong was a stuck landing gear. Of course watching their baby flip over on the runway must have been a bit heart-wrenching but hopefully it’s not too badly damaged.
I think you are right — looking at the press release, they got exactly what they were looking for, as in flight data and software performance. The landing gear on this craft is not the final design and wasn’t a major part of the test. This vehicle will probably be like OV-101 Enterprise, and never go into space anyways.
New info from spaceflightnow-
That’s certainly great news. It also answers something that I had been wondering about, having seen several clips over the years of airliners landing with a stuck main gear, and the pilot keeping it level as long as possible, I was wondering if they had programmed the Dream Chaser’s software to handle this type of situation the same way and apparently they did.
Two thumbs up for the fuzzy dice.
Maybe a Hawaiian Girl Bobblehead would have given them better luck.
Some history: Boeing’s Phantom Works helped Sierra Nevada build the engineering and first flight Dreamchasers, using the old NASA HL-10 and HL-20 spaceplane designs and knowledge base , pre-Shuttle . Which is why I would name it the ” Deja Vu” on its nose art. I think they intend to name it ” Eagle” however.
Phantomworks also did the early development of the X-37 spaceplane 1999-2004 before it was transferred to DARPA / USAF , now on its third orbital flight. Boeing wants to build a larger 6-passenger manrated spaceplane , scaled up from the model now in orbit. it would be competing with its own CST-100 capsule in doing so , besides have to launch them both on a competitor’s booster. Go figure.
Meanwhile, Sierra Nevada since contracted with Lockheed to build the actual space-capable reuseable Dreamchasers, owing to their expertise in carbon composite tech. One of those airframes is now in pre-production in Michoud Louisiana. SNC would like to build an indeterminate number of Dreamchasers, a ” fleet” of them. And they keep saying they can and should be launched on both the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Lockheed Atlas V boosters. ( Not sure if the former is a working reality ).
I suspect the Dreamchaser that just crashed is largely intact , and still flyable. It’s a resilient bird. Bounces rather than breaks. It is the first airframe actually suitable for rocket launch . To orbit and back ? – dunno about that part. The F-5E fighter jet landing gear being used presently is not the intended landing gear for flight, which will be all-electric.
I actually think the future of manned spaceplanes is pretty bright. Sierra Nevada still needs to show us the crash video , though. There’s no shame in that.
Engineers within Boeing also would like to build the X-37C, according to an employee. This would be a winged orbiter capable of carrying up to six humans and cargo. A quick search found this article, which could be better, but gives an idea of the craft.
http://www.spacesafetymagaz…
My guy tells me that the design of the -C is, for all practical purposes, complete. And of course the basic design has been flying successfully as the smaller X-37B for several years. As such developments go, the -C would appear to be a relatively safe bet. However, I doubt NASA could fund it, and Boeing–not a charity–would see it as competition to the CST-100.
NASA abandoned the lifting body in the early 70’s when they found that a conventional delta wing gave higher L/D, lower landing speeds and better scalability up to the 100-ton shuttle. The X-37 rectified the shuttle’s CG sensitivity and lack of pitch authority by putting the delta wing amidships and adding a v-tail with a much longer control moment arm. They also dropped the vertical tail which was of very limited value on Shuttle due to being in the wake during hypersonic entry.
That said, the DC had an insurmountable advantage over the X-37C because the DC allowed two pilots to sit side by side behind a windshield, with the remaining crew sitting in pairs, making it easy to chat. The X-37 with its thinner fuselage, required them to sit in single file and (preferably) see out only with video. Of course the autopilot can do a safer job of landing at 150+ kts, but I would not tell that to an astronaut.
Carbon composite aeroshells generally don’t do well with impacts.
I think the vehicle can certainly be made to work, but I have serious doubts about a human holding the stick at a rather hot touchdown speed of 191 knots vs about 155 kt (my SWAG from the video, could be off) for the X-37. The latter has wings which permit a higher lift to drag ratio than a lifting body. Every additional knot at touchdown increases the pucker factor a bit.
The Space Shuttle regularly landed hot, targteting for 214 kts/2500 ft downrange. Drop your doubts.
“This was the first test of a lifting body since the 1970s.” ?????
Really???? Then what was the X-38?