Theotherguysnasa Needs a Space Taxi. the Likely Pick Is Spacex
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NASA needs a space taxi. The likely pick is SpaceX — but don’t count out this Colorado company. The Other Guys BY MICHAEL BEHAR STANDING BESIDE Dream Chaser, for our nation. It’s the opportunity to get the United States back into launching it’s hard to ignore its resemblance humans into space.” to the space shuttle. It’s smaller— Voss showed me around the bay where Sierra Nevada is constructing Dream only 30 feet long from nose to Chaser, a seven-passenger reusable space- tail—and the wings are upswept plane that, if it is selected by NASA, would be carried to space atop an Atlas V rocket. and canted. But in overall shape, After decoupling from its launch vehicle, Dream Chaser would ignite its engines the kinship is clear. Still, the com- to reach its final destination. It’s capable pany building this vehicle says of docking with the ISS, or performing a variety of multi-day missions in low Earth it is not trying to make Shuttle orbit, then returning home in a glide to a 2.0. “We’re not fixing all the shut- runway landing. While Dream Chaser is based on a long-established aerodynamic tle’s problems,” avows Jim Voss, concept called a lifting body, it incorporates the avuncular vice president of numerous innovations never before used Opposite: Vying for the job of frst commercial astronaut hauler, Dream Chaser got on a manned orbital vehicle, including put through its aerodynamic paces last year when its maker, Sierra Nevada, dangled Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space hybrid-fueled engines and a carbon-fiber it from an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter over Jeferson County, Colorado. Former fuselage. astronaut Jim Voss (above) came out of retirement to help lead the underdog efort. Exploration Systems division. With Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada “We’re an evolutionary step from hopes to win the contract for NASA’s The other competitor is SpaceX, led by bil- Nevada is a 49-year-old aerospace corpo- Commercial Crew Integrated Capability lionaire Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who ration with more than 2,100 employees the shuttle, taking everything we program, a partnership between the space co-founded PayPal and luxury electric-car and $1.2 billion in annual revenue, it learned from it and applying that agency and commercial aerospace firms. maker Tesla Motors. On May 25, 2012, has never built a crewed space vehicle. The primary aim of the program is to fur- the SpaceX capsule, called Dragon, made The company manufactures navigation to our vehicle to take [spaceflight] nish NASA with a reusable vehicle that history when it became the first privately and avionics equipment, microsatellites, can ferry astronauts to and from the ISS built vehicle to dock with the space sta- and various components for other space- to the next generation.” ULDER BO (cargo will also travel aboard commercial tion. Though the mission was unmanned, craft. Sierra Nevada’s claim to fame is O rockets). It will be the first time the U.S. Dragon gave NASA a convincing proof- the innovative sky-crane system it built RAD O Voss himself is a familiar figure from L government will hire a private entity to of-concept demonstration. The winning for Curiosity, which enabled the rover to O an earlier era of spaceflight. A former C F transport astronauts into space. design (or designs—NASA has hinted it safely touch down on Mars in August 2012 O astronaut, he flew six shuttle missions For the contract, worth up to $1 billion, might choose two), set to be announced (see “Dropping in on Mars,” Dec. 2011/ ERSITY ERSITY and spent 163 consecutive days on the V Sierra Nevada is competing against two in May 2014, will proceed to the program’s Jan. 2012). International Space Station. Now 63, he : UNI heavyweights pursuing conventional cap- Phase 4, with trips to the space station com- Sierra Nevada’s lack of experience in E says: “I’ve retired three times already.” sule designs. Boeing, the most experienced mencing three years later. To date, NASA crewed spacecraft could be a NASA deal BOV When we met last November at Sierra A aerospace contractor in history, having has awarded $460 million to Boeing and killer. “They’ve worked on airplane sys- Nevada’s headquarters in Louisville, a bed- had its hand in virtually every human $440 million to SpaceX, while funding tems and on unmanned space systems room community near Denver, he said, “I spaceflight system flown by the United Sierra Nevada with just $212 million. but never done human spaceflight,” notes believe we’re doing something important KSC; NASA LEFT: States, is developing the CST-100 capsule. Why so little? Even though Sierra James Muncy, president of PoliSpace, an 28 | AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com AUGUST 2013 AIR & SPACE | 29 aerospace consulting firm. Muncy also “It forced us to think differently, to think and I wanted to change the world,” he says. his experiences at NASA. “We move a little could zoom through the stratosphere to known as a ballistic reentry). A low-G co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation, outside the box, to be more innovative, The Dream Chaser clan is tight-knit, quicker here,” he says. “The engineering the edge of space, from where it would drop ride permits Dream Chaser to carry frag- an advocacy group for public-private part- to come up with essentially better, faster its members collaborating on the fly in staff is here, our machine shop is here.” ordnance (New York City was the intended ile scientific cargo with a greater margin nerships in space exploration. “This is a ways of doing things, all while keeping our a setting that feels more like a nimble Just then, a technician rams an object into target), then return and glide unpowered of safety. “If you don’t shake, rattle, and new thing for Sierra Nevada, which sets budget pretty low. It’s a challenge—doing cash-strapped startup than a billion-dollar a bench grinder, filling the room with an back to Earth. While the Silbervogel never roll as much, you get better science,” says them up automatically as an underdog. more with less—but it keeps us fighting.” conglomerate. They often work nights and ear-splitting screech and the stench of got out of the wind tunnel, it inspired many Ed Mango, NASA program manager for They’re a credible company, and have No one at Sierra Nevada sounds resent- weekends when up against a deadline. In charred metal. “We make decisions in future lifting bodies, including Boeing’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability. put together a good team. But they’re not ful over the fact that the competitors often the company’s bay, hand-cranked hydrau- hours instead of weeks or months,” Voss X-20 Dyna-Soar. Drug companies are interested in growing Boeing and they’re not flying something dominate the media limelight. “Each of the lic jacks prop Dream Chaser three feet off shouts over the din. He recounts a story Dream Chaser’s nearest cousin is the protein crystals in microgravity, explains now. By definition they’re behind.” other companies have their place,” Voss the floor. A technician is crouched beneath told to him by one of his engineers, who HL-20, a craft designed at NASA’s Langley Lindsey. “You grow these things very Voss, who leads the 200-member Dream says. “One is more vocal, more show, and its nose, whistling while hand polishing had come to Sierra Nevada from NASA’s Research Center in Virginia in the early carefully in orbit. If you’re putting 8 Gs Chaser team, defends his company: “We’ve one is the old-school aerospace company. a section of fuselage with a piece of sand- Orion program, which is developing a 1990s. (Langley engineers co-opted the on them, or [they are in a capsule that is] flown 4,000 things on over 413 different We are somewhere in the middle of that. paper. Inside the spacecraft, on the flight crewed spacecraft for missions to the moon design from a photograph of a Soviet slamming into the water or slamming into space missions and we’ve never had a fail- We are the other guys.” deck, a pair of fuzzy dice hangs from the and Mars. To approve a single design mod- spaceplane, revealed later to be the BOR-4.) land, you can damage that payload” if it is ure.” And Dream Chaser has already made ification, “he had to go through, I think, At least in shape, the HL-20 and the Dream not sufficiently buffered. one successful flight test. In May 2012, a Dream Chaser is the frst manned spacecraf made of composite (below, lef). about 70 [review] boards and it took almost Chaser are nearly identical. (Lindsey Langley engineers got as far as a full- Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter hoisted Tooling can be changed faster for composites than for metal, so additional vehicles a year. I can get my management together says Sierra Nevada “actually brought in scale mockup of the HL-20. In 2005, the spacecraft aloft, carrying it from the end might be turned out quicker. Below, right: Test fring of the hybrid rocket. and in an hour we can make a decision, a a couple of retirees who had worked on SpaceDev, now a subsidiary of Sierra of a 100-foot-long steel cable. Dream Chaser THE OTHER GUYS are no slouches. ceiling. (“They flew on our first flight test The inspiration (lef): HL-20, here being tested in 1989 for pitch oscillations. Some “flew” for about an hour, doing roughly Among the team members is chief sys- and now they are our lucky dice,” says HL-20 team members later helped with Dream Chaser.