One of my favorite things is to learn how spaceships work. I’ve been doing it since I was 12 years old and I still love it. I’m also lucky enough to get paid to do it. My career as a NASA Flight Controller kicked into high gear in the late 90s when I got to learn how a gigantic new spaceship – that had to be assembled in orbit – worked. That was an amazing time.
Things are amazing again these days. I’m working with several new spaceships as a Chief Training Officer – think of a villain in a lair, working with a team of evil experts, wreaking havoc which astronauts and flight controllers have to manage.
First up is the Sierra Space Dream Chaser. Note: The picture above was taken during a joint simulation between the NASA flight control team (working in Houston) and the Sierra flight control team (working in Colorado).
Very few spaceships have wings. That’s because weight is money in spaceships and wings are heavier than parachutes. There have been a few (weird) exceptions to this rule. There was a large, winged spaceship that flew for decades, that didn’t make much sense from an engineering perspective. But it made sense from a government-managed compromise perspective. I also hear it was a joy to fly. And yes, I spent 5 years working on that program at the beginning of my career.
Sierra Space adapted an old X-plane winged design that makes sense to an aerospace engineer, because the wings are small. I’ve seen the actual wings under construction and was pleasantly surprised by how little they are.
Dream Chaser will be flying cargo (not people) to the International Space Station next year. They fill up the winged part (UDC) and cone-shaped part (CM) with cargo. And, unlike most ISS cargo vehicles, the cargo will be flown home with a runway landing. The cargo (trash) in the CM will burn up during entry. Dream Chaser will be one of the first vehicles to fly on a Vulcan rocket, which is the logical choice.
In order to be ready for the Dream Chaser, ISS crew and mission controllers need to be trained. Crewmembers currently fly out to Colorado and climb around in full-scale Dream Chaser mock-ups to learn how to handle the hatches and cargo unloading and loading. For the mission control team, we do joint simulations to prep for rendezvous and capture, cargo ops and departure. The robotics team also does small scale sims to practice berthing the Dream Chaser CM to ISS Node 2 (or Node 1).
