SNC Reveals DC4Science Dream Chaser Variant

From article:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/...haser-variant/

To use a baseball analogy, I gotta give Sierra Nevada a lot of credit for striking out swinging rather than on a called strike.

But realistically, the only way this is going to 'fly' is to convince a deep pocket socialist entity at this point. For several reasons. The primary one being SNC doesn't have a lift capacity to orbit on their own. Outside of a redesign to fit on the Stratolaunch, that leaves them only with options for ULA, SpaceX or ESA, assuming that ITAR would prevent them from launching atop a Soyuz rocket or Long March variant.

ULA and SpaceX have their own capsules, so it would make sense for them to persue the DreamChaser unless on behalf of a third client willing to fund putting it atop one of their existing rockets. I know DC was designed for the Atlas-5 so for ULA no problem there, I haven't looked at the specs closely enough to know if the DC as designed would fly atop an F9, but I have no doubt it could fly on an F9H.

So, back to baseball, to whom is this really being "pitched"? I'd have to say ESA. It would given them a very credible crewed capacity with little design effort required on their part, other than to adapt or design an Arianne variant to fly it.

Outside of that, the only other party of interest I can think of would be DARPA/Air-Force. So when do we see the mil-spec version? The DC2Spy4?

;-)

Dave