Technically it should be easy, but it probably wouldn't be very useful. With fixed-position wings it can't fit in a fairing, meaning it can't carry the expendable module. Without that, pressurized volume drops by like half and it loses unpressurized capacity entirely, plus the scheduling benefit of being able to do IDS or CBM attachment. With the main launch options all being fully or mostly expendable, it seems difficult for such a craft to compete against the other CRS systems with such a drop in capability. It'd still need at least an AV N32 most likely, judging by the crew variant (less densely packed I assume) needing 2 boosters and 2 RL10s. Cygnus has over two times the pressurized volume, but requires no boosters and only 1 RL10 (~25-30 million dollars savings). And folding wings (even if deployed at liftoff, without a fairing) are likely a hard no for NASA crew missions
A lot of people seem to be reading this as 'Sierra Nevada' owns the DC launched on the foreign rocket. I, however, read this more as a 'sales ploy'. "So, ESA/JAXA wants its own astronaut launch capability? Here, buy a couple DCs from us, they'll work on your launcher with just a little fine tuning." "Hey Virgin Galactic. Why spend all that money developing SS-3 in-house when we have a perfectly viable system to put in your hands."
I gotta wonder though, why is DC apparently having so much more success on this than DragonLab? Dragon already exists and is flying routinely, offers comparable downmass/volume capacity and more unpressurized up capacity, and its probably significantly cheaper since F9 is cheaper than Atlas or Ariane and its trunk is simpler than Dream Chaser's equivalent. Yet SpaceX advertised DragonLab flights for years, and apparently never got any serious interest
You seem to be making a heck of a lot of assumptions here in multiple areas. For a start I very much doubt that Dragon offers a comparable downmass/volume capacity for the simple fact that DC is intending to fulfil its cargo commitments with less flights than Dragon is.
We don't know how serious the interest in flying experiments on Dream Chaser is from any of these ~150 parties is - just that they have apparently expressed interest. DragonLab got at least as far as SpaceX manifesting flights http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/spacex-adds-two-dragonlabtm-missions-manifest The press release is from December of 2008, about 18 months from when Falcon 9 first flew. I don't think they ever released who their customers were or why those flights were canceled. Don't get me wrong - I'd like to see Dream Chaser succeed, and the interest alone is encouraging for Sierra Nevada. But right now there's just a tweet.
There's no private sector interest in flying any of these vehicles at realistic mission prices.
Hit a big nail on the head there. It's no secret that the Russian half of ISS has much less science to do compared to the US half, mostly owing to funding. If there were good commercial demand for space science the Russians would be selling their excess capabilities, and much cheaper than any dedicated launch.
Why cargo module is conical and not cylindrical shape?
Quote from: fast on 04/08/2019 07:29 amWhy cargo module is conical and not cylindrical shape?Larger base = more stable.
Quote from: b0objunior on 04/08/2019 07:42 amQuote from: fast on 04/08/2019 07:29 amWhy cargo module is conical and not cylindrical shape?Larger base = more stable.I think it would have more to do with the interface with the spaceplane has footprint limits while the cargo module has to maximize volume.
hey...anyone got a pic of what the crewed DC would look like?Also is the crewed variant dead? how long would it take to outfit a cargo DC for a crew?