Dream Chaser Is Facing Serious Problem... No Flight Soon! скачать в хорошем качестве

Dream Chaser Is Facing Serious Problem... No Flight Soon!

The space world has never been this competitive. Every year, new companies enter the race, and existing ones are constantly building new rockets, spacecraft, and technologies. From satellite launches to space stations, the demand is growing fast. In this packed and rapidly evolving industry, one of the most promising companies over the past few years has been Sierra Space. And for a long time, we’ve all been waiting for one thing from them — the Dream Chaser spaceplane. A small, winged spacecraft designed to land on runways and be reused again and again. It’s been in development for years, and recently, they’ve finally come close to launching it. The spacecraft is complete, testing has been passed, and it’s even moved to the launch site. But once again, there's a delay. Dream Chaser’s first operational version is called Tenacity. It’s a reusable lifting-body spaceplane, about 9 meters long, with folding wings that allow it to fit inside standard rocket fairings. Unlike capsules that land with parachutes, Dream Chaser will glide back to Earth and land on a runway, just like an airplane. This offers huge benefits for bringing back time-sensitive experiments, medical samples, or fragile equipment from space. Sierra Space is building Dream Chaser under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract. It’s been awarded at least seven cargo missions to the International Space Station. The vehicle itself is designed to carry over 5 tons of pressurized and unpressurized cargo, and with the addition of the Shooting Star cargo module, the total capacity increases to around 12 tons. This module is detachable and burns up in the atmosphere after use, allowing for safe waste disposal. The spacecraft uses non-toxic propulsion — a combination of propane and nitrous oxide — powering in-house developed Vortex engines. The benefit of using these storable, green propellants is that they’re easier to manage on the ground and safer for repeated operations. On top of that, the spacecraft is covered in thousands of silica-based heat shield tiles, designed to survive reentry temperatures of up to 1,600°C. Each tile can be reused up to 15 times.