Dream Chaser - History

History

The historical antecedents of the Dream Chaser go back nearly 50 years in the US and Soviet airplane and lifting body research.

The name "Dream Chaser" has been used for two separate space vehicles. One, planned to be an orbital vehicle based on the NASA HL-20, originated at SpaceDev when Jim Benson was still there. The second, a suborbital vehicle, was the product of Jim Benson's having reused the name when he formed the Benson Space Company for the purposes of space tourism.

The Dream Chaser was publicly announced on 20 September 2004 as candidate for NASA's Vision for Space Exploration and later Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program (COTS).

When the Dream Chaser was not selected under Phase 1 of the COTS Program, SpaceDev founder Jim Benson stepped down as Chairman of SpaceDev and started Benson Space Company to pursue the development of the Dream Chaser. In April 2007, SpaceDev announced that it had partnered with the United Launch Alliance to pursue the possibility of utilizing the Atlas V booster rocket as the Dream Chaser's launch vehicle. In June 2011, SpaceDev signed a Space Act agreement with NASA. In August 2011, ULA announced that the Atlas V would be used to launch the Dream Chaser spaceplane.

SpaceDev was acquired by Sierra Nevada Corporation in December 2008. On 1 February 2010, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded $20 million in seed money under NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) phase 1 program for the development of the Dream Chaser. Of the $50 million awarded by the CCDev program, Dream Chaser's award represented the largest share of the funds.

For the CCDev phase 2 solicitation by NASA in October 2010, Sierra Nevada proposed extensions of Dream Chaser spaceplane technology. Similar to the Orbital Sciences phase 2 proposal, the Dream Chaser is also a lifting body design. According to head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems Mark Sirangelo, the cost of completing the Dream Chaser should be less than $1 billion. On 18 April 2011, NASA awarded nearly $270 million in funding for CCDev 2, including $80 million to Sierra Nevada for Dream Chaser. On 3 August 2012, NASA announced the award of $212.5 million to Sierra Nevada to continue work on the Dream Chaser under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCAP) Program.