Dream Chaser followup

The Denver Post and the Longmont (Colo.) Daily Times-Call provide coverage of yesterday’s SpaceDev event at Centennial Airport outside Denver, where the company unveiled a full-sized model of its Dream Chaser vehicle. The event was apparently a prelude to a two-day presentation today and tomorrow for visiting NASA officials as part of the COTS source selection process. The two articles don’t offer many new details about the vehicle, although they both have photos of the model (on display in a hangar that belongs to Adam Aircraft, a company teaming with SpaceDev on the COTS effort.)

Scott Tibbitts, founder of Starsys, the company acquired by SpaceDev earlier this year, did have an interesting comment on the “blunt-nosed, small-airplane-on-steroids” Dream Chaser design, which is distinct from the capsule-based designs the other five finalists for COTS have reportedly proposed. “If I’m a kid, I’m not excited about flying in a capsule,” Tibbitts said. “I’d be excited in flying in something that looks like (the Dream Chaser).” If you’re going to fly to space, do you really care if the vehicle you’re flying in looks like a plane, capsule, or anything else, so long as it works?

2 comments to Dream Chaser followup

  • Peter Shearer

    I don’t know. That things pretty ugly. I think I’d rather fly in a capsule but like the man said… “so long as it works”

    Beam me up Scotty…

    Is it just me or is THAT the ship in “Superman Returns” TV spot??? Even the cockpit looks like it and not SS2 especially with that well known actor wearing a cheesy (thanks hollywood!) spacesuit and looking like a retard.

    I might be able to afford a suborbital ride and maybe if I penny pinch for the next 15 years an orbital ride… but when we start going to the moon I think I’ll save some money, get a half price discount and just get a one way ticket!

  • Aaron Oesterle

    I disagree, I think it is pretty. That said, the idea that style doesn’t play into peoples desicions with reaguard to personal spaceflight is naive. Yes, it shouldn’t play any factor, but it does – now how much it place is open for deabate.

    In anycase, beyond the fact that it will be a hybrid rocket, and large, do we have any further data on the rocket itself?

Leave a Reply to Aaron Oesterle Cancel reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>