Dream Chaser Damaged In Landing Accident At Edwards AFB 73
RocketAcademy writes "The test article for Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft suffered a landing accident on Saturday when the left main landing gear failed to deploy, causing the vehicle to flip over. NBC News quotes a Sierra Nevada engineer saying that the pilot would have walked away.
Sierra Nevada Corporation is developing the Dream Chaser to support the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo program. It is not yet known what effect the mishap will have on Dream Chaser development.
A number of rocket vehicles have suffered landing-gear mishaps in the recent past. Several years ago, concerns over spacecraft gear design led to a call for NASA to fund a technology prize for robust, light-weight landing gear concepts."
Re:Would have walked away? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would the passengers also survived? Key question.
Have passengers survived crashes when landing systems didn't work properly with commercial aviation vehicles? In this regard, it is absolutely no different. Furthermore, the part that failed was something that was a standard part for military jet aircraft and would have failed with a similar landing situation (in terms of landing speed and weight of the aircraft) and would have similarly put the pilot and passengers in danger. Besides, if you RTFA you would have seen that Sierra Nevada is planning on replacing that landing sub-assembly with another landing system anyway. All this mishap has done is speed up that replacement.
What failed is already FAA certified and in fact this accident is likely going to force a grounding of other aircraft which use this same landing system. If anything, this engineering test might even save a few lives, which is sort of the point of doing engineering tests like this. Usually you learn far more with failures than you do if it is a flawless success. Because it was an engineering test, it would never have had passengers in the first place so your question is also moot. That is like asking if the engineering tests of the Boeing 777 were ever intended to have passengers?