Swiss Space Systems Sign Development Agreement with Thales Alenia

Credit: Swiss Space Systems

Swiss Space Systems has signed an agreement with Thales Alenia Space to develop the pressurized compartment for its air launched SOAR (Sub-Orbital Aircraft Reusable  space plane announced in March.  SOAR is intended to be primarily employed as reusable  second stage for launching small satellites, but S3 is also seeking to enter the suborbital research and tourism market with a pressurized compartment which can be reconfigured depending on the mission. Thales Alenia brings its deep experience to the effort, which includes current work building the pressurized compartment for Orbital Sciences Cygnus Cargo craft. 

The full press release is here. 

Dream Chaser Heads to Dryden for Start of Free Flight Tests

Following a path taken in 1977 by the Space Shuttle Enterprise which saw the orbiter’s first ever free fly flight over NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Ca. Sierra Nevada Corporation is preparing to embark on a series of tests of its own Dream Chaser space plane as a part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.  

NASA Commercial  Crew Update

Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) Space Systems currently is shipping its Dream Chaser engineering test article from the company’s facility in Louisville, Colo., to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., where it will begin its flight test program in collaboration with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP). The five-state journey that began the morning of Saturday, May 11, will take approximately four days to complete.

The testing at Dryden will include tow, captive-carry and free-flight tests of the Dream Chaser. A truck will tow the vehicle down a runway to validate performance of the nose strut, brakes and tires. The captive-carry flights will further examine the loads the vehicle will encounter during flight and test the performance and flutter of the vehicle up to release from an Erickson Skycrane helicopter. The free-flight tests are designed to validate the Dream Chaser’s aerodynamics as well as test the flight control surfaces to verify flight characteristics for approach, flare and landing.

The Dream Chaser Partnership: Vital Next Step or Expensive Gamble?

Dream Chaser
Credit : SNC

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s announcement last week that it is partnering with Lockheed Martin to further develop its Dream Chaser space plane for NASA’s Commercial Crew Competition brings a new twist to the program to succeed the Space Shuttle as America’s ground to LEO space transportation system.   With Dream Chaser designed to launch on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, a rocket designed by Lockheed Martin but now operated by the separate ULA in which LockMart is a 50% partner along with Boeing, last week’s announcement builds on an existing partnership in two ways.  First, by helping SNC prepare its separately bid, $10 million Certification Products Contract, the aerospace and defense giant should be able to uses its contracting prowess to advance the proposal further towards safety certification,  sort of like calling in an accountant when your taxes get a little too complicated. The second significant point of collaboration, actually building the composite structure at NASA Michoud, as a part of the $212.5 million award for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, is considerably more interesting.

Sierra Nevada clearly felt that it needed additional expertise in actually constructing the orbital flight vehicle, which is why it solicited bids for the work,  and as the lead contractor for NASA’s  Orion spacecraft,  Lockheed Martin is definitely in a position to provide it.  Boeing,  whose own defense oriented Phantom Works division actually has applicable experience in building the  X-37B robotic spaceplane,  was hardly a good candidate considering that the company  is also heavily  invested in promoting its own  CST-100 space capsule for the same program.

Another obvious choice was Northrop Grumman, which recently made human spaceflight news when it was selected to refine designs for Golden Spike’s proposed lunar lander.  More to the point, as the owner of Scaled Composites since 2007,  which previously built the prototype X-38 Crew Return  Vehicle,  as well as the all-composite  Spaceship’s 1 and 2,   Northrop Grumman would have presumably been in a position to provide experience as well.

If the Orion program, which has cost the taxpayer nearly 9 billion dollars dating back to the emergence of the original Crew Exploration Vehicle proposal in 2004,  is illustrative, Lockheed Martin, which won the development contract in 2006,  is also bringing a legacy of extremely high costs to the project, which will  ultimately have to fit within the constrained funding profile of the Commercial Crew Program.  Considering its role in other high profile, budget busting programs such as the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter, significant involvement in the Dream Chaser project has got to raise the question of how costs will be contained to fit within what will realistically be available.

The entry is already financially challenged hampered by the Atlas V launch vehicle, which is almost certain to carry a considerably higher per flight cost than the alternative SpaceX Falcon 9. Ironically,  this very factor could actually work in SNC’s favor in a two winner scenario. With the Boeing CST-100 also launched by the Atlas V,  decision makers might find it appealing to proceed quickly with the lower cost and flight proven Falcon 9 /  Dragon combination, thereby allowing a funding wedge for the slower developing Dream Chaser, an entry with definite advantages in some areas, as well as obvious emotional appeal as successor to the Shuttle.

For the moment at least, it appears that the Sierra Nevada / Lockheed Martin partnership both increases the chances that the Dream Chaser proposal will be advanced to become an acceptable, certifiable spacecraft, while at the same time raising the risk that its full costs will grown beyond the bounds of the Commercial Crew program as it is currently structured.

With NASA facing long-term budget austerity,  Lockheed Martin, through Sierra Nevada,   now joins Boeing in having a stake on both sides of the SLS/Commercial Crew split, one which is likely to become increasingly heated over next several budget cycles.

X-37B : Putting the Cart Under the Horse

X-37B
Credit: USAF

Tuesday’s launch of a Atlas V rocket carrying the X-37B unmanned orbital space plane marked an interesting development in the gradual progression of  reusable space flight capability.  In the first place, it represented a return to flight of the RL-10 upper stage engine following an October Delta IV launch “anomaly” in which an underperfoming engine led to a longer than planned burn to reach orbit.  Although the source has been traced to a fuel leak, the exact cause of the leak has yet to be determined.  Nevertheless, after ruling out potential “crossover issues” between the Delta IV’s RL-10 and the slightly different version flown on the Atlas V, the Air Force signed off on this week’s launch.

As for the payload, the small, unmanned space plane partially developed by NASA and subsequently acquired by the  Air Force,  the re-launch of OTV-1, the first of two X-37B’s,  places it in a unique club with the Space Shuttle Orbiters as the world’s only reusable orbital spacecraft to have been reflown.  Given that much about the program is classified, it’s not possible to assess the relative value of the program in terms of its specific  mission.  We also don’t have a clear idea whether or not the repair and refurbishment effort in-between flights marks it as an advancement in  improving the operational costs of re-using spacecraft or leaves it on par with the Shuttle, after accounting for the obvious size and complexity differences.  What we do know at this point, is that assuming a successful return from orbit,  the X-37B, in completing two complete trips to space, would seem to indicate that U.S. has retained and is applying some of the lessons regarding winged spaceflight learned over the course of the Shuttle program. Hopefully, some of that expertise will pass through the filter of secrecy, and benefit other related spacecraft, notably  Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser.  It is after all not the fact that we can recover and reuse spacecraft, but the skill to do so affordably, what Elon Musk terms to as “rapid reusability” which will have lasting significance.

On the other side of the ledger,  and seen not from a programmatic perspective, but from the point of view of overall progression towards a robust, expanding and affordable launch industry,  it seems amazingly shortsighted, to the point of being absurd,  that the United States government has now developed and flown two series of re-usable winged spacecraft,  without making any progress, or even really any attempt,  at improving the other end of the stack, a re-usable first stage booster which could leverage the entire industry.  The disparity is particularly noteworthy when one considers the launch cost of the Atlas V 501 rocket, which depending on how you assign its share of the Launch Capability Contract (subsidy)  easily exceeds $200 million for this mission alone.  Throw in the fact that it is powered by a Russian RD-180, staged combustion main engine which is an impressive technology we use, but a after a decade of doing so have not sought to replicate or improve,  and it is possible to draw the conclusion that for all the “wow” factor in the X-37B, we are not only still putting the cart in front of the horse,  he is standing on it.