A reusable spacecraft that looks like a miniature version of the Space Shuttle took to the air in a critical test over the weekend:

An atmospheric test article of Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser spaceship made a successful runway landing Saturday at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a glide test flight performed to verify the craft’s handling qualities and guidance systems before future resupply missions to the International Space Station.

Sierra Nevada plans to fly them to the International Space Station in the next 2-3 years. It can land at any major commercial airport, as it does not need any more runway length than what is at a typical commercial facility.

Interestingly, it has a heritage that goes back through NC State University. In 2011, professors and students from NCSU and NC A&T built one of the models used in its design, the NASA HL-20.

A full-size engineering research model of the HL-20 was constructed by the students and faculty of North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T University for studying crew seating arrangements, habitability, equipment layout and crew ingress and egress. This engineering research model is 29 feet (8.84 m) long and provided the full-scale external and internal definition of the HL-20 for studies at the Langley Research Center.

NASA eventually abandoned the idea of building the spacecraft. It was a good idea at the time, and perhaps the US would have maintained access for humans to orbit from American soil had it been built. Unfortunately, political winds blew in a different direction and the program was canceled. Eventually the Shuttle program ended in 2011 and to date the US has had no program to launch astronauts to its own space station. Instead, it relies on purchasing rides from Russia, at great cost.

The design philosophy of the HL-20 PLS concept has been to complement the Space Shuttle with safe, reliable manned transportation at the lowest cost. Of utmost importance is crew safety with emphasis being given in the HL-20 design to launch abort situations and the protection of the crew during vehicle recovery. Other requirements had focused on minimizing life-cycle costs of the system by insuring simple operations, low-cost manufacturing, and high utilization potential.

(from NASA: HL-20 Model for Personnel Launch System Research: A Lifting-Body Concept)

Sierra Nevada picked up where NASA left off, and is now building final test vehicles before launching one into orbit on top of an Atlas V rocket as soon as 2019.

At first, Dream Chaser will be an unmanned vehicle, but the company intends to complete a crewed version in the 2020’s. Sierra Nevada has ties with UNOOSA, a United Nations group that plans to use Dream Chaser. There is also interest from other countries to use it as well.

Dream Chaser® Cargo System (uncrewed) In January 2016, NASA selected our Dream Chaser Cargo System to provide cargo delivery, return and disposal services for the International Space Station (ISS). Under the Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) contract, Dream Chaser will provide a minimum of six cargo service missions to and from the ISS between 2019 and 2024.

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Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser Flight Test Article lands at Edward Air Force Base on Saturday, November 11, 2017. (Photo: NASA) Robert Vess, a lecturer in mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State Univeristy, Raleigh, N.C., installs the window flange trim on a full-size engineering model of the HL-20 lifting body. The model was built by NCSU and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, Greensboro, N.C. Credit: NASA