World’s first commercial space plane finally ready for flight after 40 years

Commercial space company Sierra Space says its space plane, named the Dream Chaser, is almost ready for its first flight to the International Space Station.

Back in the 1960s when the Space Shuttle was initially being designed, the ethos was to create a reusable spaceship that could use ordinary landing strips. Space travel has moved on a great deal since then, but the idea of a reusable space plane has never truly died. Commercial space and aeronautics company Sierra Space claims they are almost ready to make that idea a reality. It sounds like something straight from Starfield or Star Trek, but science fiction is now becoming a reality.

The spaceplane has been appropriately named the Dream Chaser, and when Ars Technica paid a visit to the construction facility it was buzzing with activity as technicians and engineers added finishing touches and performed all the final checks necessary to ensure the Dream Chaser was ready to leave the factory.

For now, the Dream Chaser will be restricted to hauling cargo to and from the International Space Station. Dream Chaser can haul up to 12,000 pounds (5,500 kilograms) of cargo to the station. The spaceplane’s return cargo capacity is about 4,000 pounds (1,850 kilograms), with an extra expendable cargo module named the ‘Shooting Star’ which is designed to burn up in the atmosphere and is perfect for disposing of the trash accumulated from the ISS.

40 years in the making

The origin of Sierra Space and the Dream Chaser goes right back to the 1980s when Australian experts and their NASA counterparts were puzzling over a Russian prototype lifting body called the BOR-4. After reverse engineering the technology into a concept named HL-20, which NASA subsequently licensed to SpaceDev, the predecessor to Sierra Space.

Sierra Space, ArsTechnica

Eventually, Sierra Space hopes to move on from cargo transport to offering transport for humans as well, with Sierra Space said to be heavily into the design phase of creating a human-rated version of the Dream Chaser.

Tom Vice, Sierra Space’s CEO and a former executive at Northrop Grumman explained that his ambitions went even further, looking to the future beyond the operational life of the ISS to Ars Technica: “The real beauty of our approach at Sierra Space is we’re building the entire platform going forward, a commercial platform,” Vice said. “So we build both the transportation systems and the in-space destinations. Of course, Dream Chaser is going to provide cargo and crew to our commercial station. That’s the way that we think about our strategy. Instead of relying on who else builds the follow-on to the ISS, it’s us.”