SNC Press release on GAO decision:http://www.sncspace.com/press_more_info.php?id=422
http://spacenews.com/gao-denies-sierra-nevada-protest-of-commercial-crew-contract/
Sierra Nevada spokesperson Krystal Scordo said that the company would continue working on the final milestone of an earlier NASA commercial crew award, involving a second glide flight of a Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle. That test is planned for 2015, but she said the company has not set a more specific date.
Jeff Foust @jeff_foust · 46m 46 minutes agoGerst: Sierra Nevada planning to do drop test of Dream Chaser under their CCiCap award in "early spring" timeframe, perhaps March.--We're not hearing things as positively....but what Gerst says, goes - officially.
Quote from: Chris Bergin on 01/13/2015 03:24 pmJeff Foust @jeff_foust · 46m 46 minutes agoGerst: Sierra Nevada planning to do drop test of Dream Chaser under their CCiCap award in "early spring" timeframe, perhaps March.--We're not hearing things as positively....but what Gerst says, goes - officially.I will note that Gerst is NASA, not SNC. Wouldn't be the first time that according to NASA something will happen and according to the contractor it might happen.
Sierra Nevada Corporation Successfully Completes Dream Chaser® Study with German Aerospace Industry Partners:http://www.sncorp.com/AboutUs/NewsDetails/749
Quote from: yg1968 on 02/03/2015 09:52 pmSierra Nevada Corporation Successfully Completes Dream Chaser® Study with German Aerospace Industry Partners:http://www.sncorp.com/AboutUs/NewsDetails/749Maybe it's just me, but I find it very annoying when people talk about things that are under development as if they already exist. This press release talks about Dream Chaser in the present tense as if it already existed. "SNC’s Dream Chaser is a multi-mission-capable space utility vehicle that is able to flexibly operate as an independent science platform, ...". If you didn't know anything about Dream Chaser and just read this press release, you'd think it was flying today. There's not a word about the fact that it's under development, let alone that there's uncertainty about whether it's going to get the huge amount of funding it would take to reach operational status. They could at the very least use the future tense.
That near-term focus on alternative launch options means Stratolaunch is deferring work on a crewed vehicle that would launch on the Orbital ATK booster. At the International Astronautic Congress in Toronto in October, Stratolaunch and Sierra Nevada Corp. announced they were studying the development of a 75-percent-scale version of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spacecraft.“What we’ve decided to do is kind of take a pause on further development of that,” he said, as Stratolaunch examines alternative launch options. Beames said that human spaceflight remained a long-term goal of the company, and that it still considered Dream Chaser the best spacecraft option. “Once those plans are solid going forward, we will re-engage with Sierra Nevada specifically on the modified Dream Chaser,” he said.
Does anyone really feel that Dreamchaser will ever get finished?