The American Spaceplane's dream hunter strangely resembles the 40-year-old Soviet design

Technology

21:41 24.03.2019(updated 21:52 24.03.2019) Get a short URL

The reusable spacecraft of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, capable of transporting up to seven crew members, landing in space ports and commercial airports, and autonomously transporting cargoes to the International Space Station, has surpassed another NASA benchmark, helping to set the stage for its first planned mission to the International Space Station in 2021.

Sierra Nevada announced that its Dream Chaser project had successfully completed NASA's ground and flight operations milestones, including the Mission Control Center, flight computers, software and flight simulator. mission of the program.

The tests would also have included demonstrations of the Dream Chaser's cargo loading capabilities using "high fidelity models of the vehicle and its cargo module, showing the time and efficiency of loading and unloading," according to a statement. press release.

John Curry, director of the ISS 2 Commercial Replenishment Service Contract (CRS-2), said the tests "were a great accomplishment for the team," claiming that it "shows that we can exploit the Dream Chaser from the ground, including by integrating critical scientific data ". and out of the vehicle. "

The company plans to make its first flight in the spring of 2021. The aircraft is expected to fly at least six flights to the ISS on an Atlas V or Ariane 5 rocket to deliver equipment and supplies, to make life worthwhile. and other urgent technologies. materials on Earth using a conventional track.

Soviet scientists began to develop an orbital spacecraft similar to that known as BOR-4 (Russian acronym for "Unpiloted Orbital Rocketplane-4") in the late 1970s. was originally designed to test the heatshield technology with other materials for the Buran space. shuttle.

Four BOR-4 planes, launched between 1982 and 1984 from the Kapustin Yar secret rocket launch and development site in the Russian region of Astrakhan, were sent into orbit, before returning to Earth to return to Earth. restore in the Indian Ocean and the Black Sea.

Images of the proto-space plane were received by intelligence services and Western space engineers in June 1982, after an air force spy plane from Australia. broke it while it was being salvaged by the Soviet Navy near the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, with the pictures. distribution of Western and military books and magazines, including the publication of the Military Soviet of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The BOR-4 was part of an extension of an even older Soviet project known as the "Spiral" orbital plane, which had been developed in the mid-1960s in response to the program of space interceptors and reconnaissance aircraft Boeing X-20 Dyna Soar of the United States.

In the mid-1980s, following the announcement by US President Ronald Reagan that Washington would attempt to create a missile defense system capable of neutralizing the Soviet nuclear deterrent, Soviet engineers developed plans to place until the end of the war. 15 BOR aircraft equipped with a nuclear charge in the space shuttle Bouran. , with the system designed to make any US missile defense system useless.

In 2005, Mark Sirangelo, co-owner of Sierra Nevada Corporation, traveled to Russia to meet the engineers who worked on the BOR-4, telling them that their ideas were living in the United States with the Dream Chaser program. According to a 2016 Washington Post report, "Sirangelo promised that when the Dream Chaser flew, he would bring a list of names of Russian engineers, as well as NASA members who had worked on the HL-20 program," with the HL-20 program similarly takes visual, technical and aerodynamic cues from the body shape of the BOR-4.