Design
Dream Chaser is a reusable composite spacecraft designed to carry from two to seven people and/or cargo to orbital destinations such as the International Space Station It will have a built-in launch escape system and can fly autonomously if needed. It can use any suitable launch vehicle but is planned to be launched on a man-rated Atlas V 402 rocket. The vehicle will be able to return from space by gliding (typically experiencing less than 1.5 g on re-entry) and landing on any airport runway that handles commercial air traffic. Its reaction control system thrusters burn ethanol based fuel, which is not an explosively volatile material, allowing the Dream Chaser to be handled immediately after landing, unlike the Space Shuttle. Its thermal protection system (TPS) is an ablative tile created by NASA's Ames center that would be replaced as a large group rather than tile by tile, and would only need to be replaced after several flights. There are plans to build a fleet of Dream Chasers.
On-orbit propulsion of the Dream Chaser is provided by twin hybrid rocket engines
Read more about this topic: Dream Chaser
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)