A private space plane may still carry people to orbit in the next few years, even though NASA passed the vehicle over as an astronaut taxi. Last month, NASA chose SpaceX and Boeing to fly its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, apparently leaving Sierra Nevada Corp.s Dream Chaser space plane out in the cold. But Sierra Nevada is now teaming up with Stratolaunch Systems to develop a way to get a scaled-down version of Dream Chaser spacecraft off the ground. Dream Chaser was originally designed to carry up to seven astronauts and launch vertically atop a rocket. But the new vision calls for a three-passenger Dream Chaser to be air-launched by a giant plane developed by Stratolaunch, a company that billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created in 2011 to make spaceflight cheaper and more efficient space/27349-dream-chaser-space-plane-stratolaunch.html?cmpid=514630_20141006_32936966
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 20:37:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015