Californian company SpaceDev has been awarded a $330,000 first-phase study contract by Benson Space to begin design of the Dream Chaser suborbital manned spaceship. The study's aim is to develop the ship and its hybrid rocket motors sufficiently for vehicle fabrication and testing in a second phase.
The Dream Chaser is based on NASA Langley's 7.16m (23.5ft)-span HL-20 lifting-body vehicle design. Explored in the 1990s, it was intended to carry eight passengers and two pilots to and from the International Space Station, and designed to be launched vertically by an expendable rocket and land horizontally on a runway. The six-person Dream Chaser is intended to launch vertically using three hybrid rocket boosters.
"We look forward to completing this first-phase study contract in March 2007," says SpaceDev chairman and chief executive Mark Sirangelo. Former NASA astronaut Hoot Gibson is to join Benson as chief test pilot.
Source: Flight International
