Sierra Nevada Advances Commercial Spaceplane
By Frank Morring, Jr. . Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology .
Like some of its billionaire competitors in the race to build commercial vehicles to take humans to orbit, Sierra Nevada Corp. is taking advantage of its private-company status to build its Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane. One of the first winners in NASA's effort to seed a commercial space transport industry with federal funds, the 2,200-strong company is leveraging its experience with aircraft modification and autonomous flight-control systems to develop a vehicle designed to carry seven crew to the International Space Station (ISS) atop an expendable launch vehicle, return to a runway landing virtually anywhere a Boeing 737 can land, and do it again as soon as another rocket is ready ...
