The streams and ponds outside the storied NASA test center, formerly known as Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, were freezing over the morning of February 1st, 2024. But inside the building, in the Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility at the NASA's Glenn Research Center, the first production variant of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane was ready to heat things up in a big way.
Inside the Armstrong Facility, DC-101 Tenacity made its triumphant debut in front of the press and media alike as it sat on a 55-foot (16.6-m) tall vertical test stack in preparation to become the first private orbital spaceplane to enter service in low-Earth orbit. As a spiritual successor to the now-defunct Space Shuttle scaled down to a more reasonable set of dimensions, this small-statured spaceplane has enormous shoes to fill.
Dream Chaser Tenacity marks the first commercial product manufactured by Sierra Space since the company split as an independent and separate entity from the larger Sierra Nevada Corporation, where the company develops everything from solar arrays to rocket propulsion systems on top of re-useable spaceplanes.
Though undoubtedly the first practically applicable private orbital spaceplane, Tenacity's DNA traces its roots to a slew of NASA vehicles and concepts that lent Dream Chaser its trademark form factor. The groundbreaking but canceled X-20 Dyna-Soar program of the mid-1960s inspired Tenacity's lifting body construction and expendable rocket launch platform.
Later, advancements in lifting body airframes by Northrop and Martin Marieta through the respective X-24 and M2-F1 derivatives helped engineers fine-tune the particulars of lifting body flight.By the early 1990s, NASA had conceptualized a small space plane less than 25,000 lbs (11,339 kg) in weight and with dimensions eerily similar to that of Dream Chaser and called the HL-20. Had it been flown, the HL-20 would've served the ISS alongside the Space Shuttle.
Photo: Sierra Space
Instead, its design was the key inspiration for a group of engineers at a Southern California-based startup aerospace firm called SpaceDev, which, in 2004, unveiled plans to construct a bespoke spaceplane based on the architecture of the HL-20. In 2007, SpaceDev reached an agreement with the United Launch Alliance to construct the carrier rocket platform for the tentative design.
ULA's efforts ultimately culminated in the Vulcan Centaur rocket, featuring the latest generation of the Centaur upper rocket stage stretching back as far as Apollo. Nowadays, SpaceDecv is no longer with us, long absorbed into what is today Sierra Space. Even so, seventeen years of rigorous development converged on NASA's prized Northern Ohio test facility.
A who's who from Sierra Space flanked by NASA and media personnel as DC-101 sat atop the Mechanical Vibration Facility at the test center's Space Environmental Complex. Those in attendance included Sierra Space's CEO Tom Vice, the former President of Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems division, Dr. James A. Kenyon, Director of NASA's Glenn Research Center, and Sierra Space's Chief Medical Officer and former NASA astronaut Dr. Thomas Marshburn.
The press conference also marked the first time Dream Chaser was seen paired with its Shooting Star companion cargo module. At 15 feet (4.6 m) long and rated to carry 11,000 lbs (5,000 kg) of pressurized and un-pressurized cargo, the extra storage space on board will become a vital pipeline for the crew on board the ISS to receive the supplies from Earth they so desperately need.
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
As NASA, Sierra Space, and media personnel alike rounded the corner that led to Space Environments Complex, all were greeted with the sight of Tenacity, there in the flesh and nearly completed with Shooting Star in tow. Much of the spacecraft's exterior was anointed with heat-resistant panels inspired by the same carbon-carbon tiles of the Space Shuttle program and built to survive the intense friction and heat of atmospheric re-entry.
In time, sections of the spacecraft yet to be covered in heat absorption tiles will have these spaces filled in preparation for launch. But not before the Mechanical Vibration Facility's world-class shaker stand trials the structural fortitude of DC-101 by simulating the immense forces imposed upon the spacecraft at launch and re-entry as planned this year, when Tenacity makes its first rendevous with the ISS.
Dream Chaser's first flight is set to be an un-crewed. As such, DC-101 starkly lacked cockpit glass. With its wings folded into the stowed position on the test stand, it was clear the wing design borrowed at least a few elements from US Navy jets stored aboard aircraft carriers for decades.
In so many ways, Dream Chaser embodies the core principles of the now-defunct Space Shuttle orbiters and scales them down to dimensions more accommodating to large-scale production and maintenance demands. With this in mind, the prospects of a fleet of space planes capable of delivering such impressive levels of equipment and supplies to the ISS on a more consistent schedule than the Shuttle could achieve speak for themselves.
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
As for the timeline for Tenacity going forward, Sierra Space intends to conduct its first Dream Chaser to ISS rendevous before the conclusion of the first half of 2024 with Shooting Star in tow, before preparations are made to construct the subsequent DC-200 series spaceplane rated for human astronauts.
Until then, Sierra Space will continue to conduct necessary vibration and acoustic tests on DC101 in conjunction with NASA before the last handful of housekeeping items are taken care of in preparation for launch, likely in the late spring or early summer of 2024. With a timeline like that, it's almost impossible not to be excited.
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