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Jeff Findley wrote:

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Why is Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) calling the Dream Chaser the SUV
of space? Because it's roomier than the cramped Dragon and CST-100
capsules? That may be, but with those you will at least have a fair
chance of making it back alive.

I'm not sure it's all that much "roomier".


Pressurized volume of Dream Chaser is over 50% more than Dragon.

But how much of that is really usable? From the (few) drawings I've
seen, most of the space is taken up by seats for the crew, much like
Dragon. I deliberately chose a word like "roomier" because of this
issue. If you have pointers to decent pictures or drawings, I'd
appreciate a hyperlink. :-)

Let's face it, a winged vehicle is too dangerous for space travel
due to the energies involved. I've claimed before that Dream Chaser
has no hope of surviving an in-flight explosion of the booster
rocket, which will rip its wings off and doom the vehicle and crew.
With a capsule, there's a fair chance you might survive.

It's not really "winged", like the space shuttle was. It's a lifting
body. Quite a bit of difference. It's heritage can be traced back to
the 1960's when the US and USSR both were researching, and flying,
lifting body designs. Both countries flew test vehicles to space and
back.


Actually, it's 'winged' exactly like the Space Shuttle was, which was
also a lifting body, but bigger. Lifting bodies are twitchy little
things to fly, especially at low speeds. Remember that scene at the
beginning of The Six Million Dollar Man? That was a real film of a
lifting body, the M2F2, that got just a little too twitchy on landing.
The pilot actually survived and returned to flight status.

I'll give you that one. The "stablizers" on Dream Chaser are rather
large and might as well qualify as wings.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer