Sierra Nevada Advances Commercial Spaceplane


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 ...
