Spacecraft with NC roots successfully tested

This past weekend, Sierra Nevada Corporation reached a milestone in their development of a reusable spacecraft capable of shuttling as many as 10 astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station.

The company quietly flight tested their Dream Chaser high above the California desert, successfully landing it at the same Edwards Air Force Base runway used by the space shuttle before it. This test ended far better than the previous free flight in 2013 where the left landing gear failed to deploy fully causing the vehicle to skid off the runway.

Dream Chaser is based largely on a lifting body design with a North Carolina origin: the HL-20 Personnel Launch System. The HL-20 began development in the late 1980s to provide an additional, lower cost crew transportation vehicle to the space shuttle.

During the spring semester of 1990, students and faculty at North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T University designed a full-scale engineering research model of the HL-20. Led by Robert Vess, a lecturer in mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, and Thurman Exum at NC A&T, a group of seven NCSU students and six NC A&T students along with four additional faculty specialists fabricated the model between March and September 1990.

The team began by creating a mold from large polystyrene foam blocks, then applying carbon fiber and fiberglass. A Piper Navajo landing gear set with brakes and steering mechanisms removed were added to the completed model.

The interior was built from three-quarter-inch plywood to meet the testing needs. The final 29-foot long model was painted and displayed at NC State before transportation to Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on a flat bed truck on a custom cradle also designed by the team.

Langley used the model in vertical and horizontal orientations to conduct human factors research including crew seating arrangements, habitability, equipment layout, crew ingress and egress, and visibility requirements during docking operations. The model was later moved to the Johnson Space Center for further evaluation by astronauts.

The HL-20 program was canceled in 1993 but resurrected 10 years ago by the Sierra Nevada.

The Dream Chaser's design is based on the HL-20 including the research that came out of the model that once stood in the NC State’s brickyard.