Ellie is a little quirky, but she does a great job reporting on space news with her YouTube channel. And if you listen closely to some of the things she’s let slip along the way, it’s obvious she’s a conservative as well. I think SNC tried to approach the development of Dreamchaser the same way that NASA approached developing the SLS and every vehicle before it. They took the approach of attempting to engineer the perfect final product before ever flying it. That can work, but it takes a very long time during which nothing much happens, which can cause those financing the project to get cold feet and pull the plug (as has apparently happened).
If SpaceX had developed Dreamchaser, they would have had at least drop tests within a few months, and a first launch not too long after that. That first prototype would look like something that someone built in their garage, but it would provide crucial real-world data to be used to refine and build the next version. From then on, they would be flying at a rapid pace, learning, iterating, and flying again until they relatively quickly had a much more sophisticated prototype that worked well. And as all of that was happening, the financial backers would be able to see continuous progress with their own eyes, not just paper dreams.
There’s only one SpaceX, but by now there should be others trying to follow their blueprint for success. I have to wonder if the reason there aren’t more companies tying to do what they do is because the traditional approach is a recipe for raking in development cash without having to spend much of it in actual development. You keep talking big and taking in more money, spending as little as possible along the way, and milk that “dream” for as long as you can.
SpaceX on the other hand spends the money they receive on actual development as fast as they can. They also commercialize their technology in any way they can to generate additional development capital. They’ve really shone a spotlight on the corruption and sloth of the traditional companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.
Excellent post. I too enjoyed the snobbish comments from the French former CEO of Arianespace.
I wonder what other kind of snotty comments have come out of his mouth since then, that made it past the Foi gras in there!
Spot on.
The Dreamchaser — if it were completed and tested — would be an ideal crew vehicle for launch to and reentry from orbit. But the company hasn’t even made an effort to build a launch vehicle to put anything up there.
When they pivoted from chasing dream to chasing cargo missions, development of their glider should have been suspended and a launch vehicle developed.
Building a reusable that doesn’t reach velocity sufficient to burn it up on reentry (the Falcon 9 approach) appears to be well within reach of many a startup.