NASA-contracted Soviet-derived spaceplane Dream Chaser makes successful glide test.

a reply to: butcherguy

I didn't say you did make that claim.

The "wings" on the lifting bodies, IIRC, are for lateral stability. That's why they're angled up like that. The actually lift comes from the body itself. The STS is kind of a hybrid between a lifting body and glider. It's technically a lifting body, but it had different aerodynamics than the smaller airframes.

a reply to: butcherguy When the Dream Chaser idea first came out I loved it. At that time I was not a big fan of the costs from launching atop a atlas rocket because that would just make the whole venture cost even more. Now that SpaceX is about to attempt the Falcon Heavy my hopes have gone up. I think that SpaceX would be better suited to launch the Dream Chaser atop the Falcon Heavy to drive down costs. Just my two cents though, not that it is worth much.

a reply to: Zaphod58 And I would like to add to your post. I could be wrong on this but let's say the Hubble started to need repairs do we have the means of fixing those with what we use now? I believe that with improve flight systems and better and more efficient engines we could perform a whole host of things that couldn't be done without the overly expensive but awesome space shuttle.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

The fuel used in Dream Chaser should be a huge improvement over hydrazine, and will be much easier to handle. It also allows for an engine that can be throttled for a change. So once the manned system is certified it should prove extremely useful.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Money for development ...I 'm STILL angry about the TSR aircraft and hope the US doesn't BOTCH up your spaceplane projects.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Here is a nice little article I was reading the other day. I hope it is not too far off topic, but check out those early concepts.

" Few spacecraft are quite so instantly recognisable as the Shuttle Orbiter. Even in retirement the surviving craft remain iconic, resplendent in their black & white thermal tiles and boasting their trademark double-delta wing.
But the story of how the Orbiter got its familiar shape and the Space Transport System reached it’s eventual configuration is an interesting one reflecting the requirements of the US Air Force more than the needs of NASA. So why did the Air Force have such a big hand in the design and what were their plans for the Shuttle? The story starts in the Apollo era of the late 1960’s. "

thehighfrontier.blog...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Why are they so HUSH HUSH about the Lockeed FDL experiments?
www.picturetrail.com...

a reply to: nelloh62

A lot of people don't realize how big of a role the military played in the space program.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Because it was never built. The entire purpose of some of those programs was to service the military stations that were never built. Not to mention the fact that it turned out to be a hell of a lot harder to do in reality than on paper.

a reply to: butcherguy

The X-20 Dyna-Soar was a winged space plane concept that is really not part of the Dream Chaser lineage.

Interest in lifting bodies dates back more than 60 years. Research by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor to NASA) involved studies regarding reentry survivability of ballistic-missile nose cones, the results of which were reported in 1953. NACA engineers Alfred Eggers and H. Julian Allen further developed the concept of lifting reentry from suborbital and orbital spaceflight, presenting their work at the Conference on High-Speed Aerodynamics in March 1958. NACA researcher Maxine Faget concluded that the lifting body concept could be used for a manned space vehicle. This became the basis for a series of studies and flight research projects a reusable space shuttle.

Ultimately, a delta-winged orbiter configuration was selected for use with the Space Transportation System (STS), but several lifting body designs were flown between 1963 and 1975.These included the unmanned ASSET and PRIME test articles that were launched atop rockets and a series of manned craft. The low-speed M2-F1 was made of wood and fabric. Unpowered, it was towed aloft behind a Pontiac sedan driving about 120 miles per hour across the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It was later towed behind a C-47 for higher-altitude glide flights. Its blunt half-cone shape earned the M2-F1 the nickname "flying bathtub."

This was followed in 1966 by the heavyweight, rocket-powered M2-F1 that was dropped from beneath the wing of a modified B-52 bomber. Following a crash in 1967, the vehicle was repaired and improved, and continued to fly as the M2-F3 until 1972. More-streamlined aerodynamic shapes were explored using the HL-10 and X-24A (a manned vehicle derived from the PRIME), and the X-24B. For a while, the HL-10 was a leading contender for the STS program but a more conventional space plane design was selected instead, eventually become what we know today as the Space Shuttle.

Possibly inspired by the U.S. lifting body efforts, the Soviets developed preliminary designs for a spaceplane concept called Spiral in 1966. Although the craft bore a superficial resemblance to the X-24A and HL-10, it was clearly a unique configuration. Several subscale, unmanned models (BOR-1, BOR-2, and BOR-3) were launched on suborbital trajectories between 1969 and 1974. BOR-1 was essentially a wooden mock-up. BOR-2 (a 1:3 scale model) and BOR-3 (a 1:2 scale model) were equipped with ablative heat shields. A manned demonstrator called the MiG 105.11 was test flown in 1977 and 1978. It was dropped from the belly of a modified Tu-95K bomber. The reusable unmanned,1:2-scale BOR-4 flew several orbital spaceflights between 1982 and 1984 to test thermal protection systems. The Soviets ultimately abandoned the Spiral project in favor of the delay-winged Buran space shuttle.

During early BOR-4 missions, the vehicle was recovered by the Soviets following splashdown in the Indian Ocean. On two occasions in 1982 and 1983 the Royal Australian Air Force managed to obtain detailed photos of the craft. American engineers at NASA Langley Research Center used these photos to create wind-tunnel models of the BOR-4. During nearly a decade of studies they analyzed the design and refined the shape with the idea of applying it to a 10-ton spacecraft dubbed the HL-20. It was to be a crew transportation system for a proposed manned space station. By the late 1990s, a larger version called the HL-42 was proposed.

Orbital Sciences Corporation picked up the idea of a BOR-4/HL-20 derivative for use as a "space taxi" under NASA's Space Launch Initiative but the project was cancelled in 2003. In 2006, after NASA announced the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, a company called SpaceDev proposed a six-passenger HL-20-type craft called Dream Chaser. In 2008, SpaceDev was acquired by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). In 2010, SNC was awarded a contract to develop Dream Chaser for the Commercial Crew Development program. The first unmanned glide flight of the Dream Chaser took place in October 2013. A spectacular approach and touchdown was marred by an equally spectacular crash landing when one of the main gear failed to extend and the Dream Chaser skidded off the runway and rolled in the desert. The vehicle was eventually repaired and the second flight, on 11 November 2017, was completely successful. And so, the legacy of U.S. and Russian lifting body designs continues to advance.

An interesting bit of trivia from the book "Wingless Flight: The Lifting Body Story". The one that crashed, the M2-F2, originally had a CG too far aft so they build a huge roll cage up front around the pilot instead of just adding ballast which probably saved pilot Petersons's life.