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."
Sierra Nevada (Score:1)
I always liked their "Celebration" Christmas ale and "Bigfoot" barley wine, and their pale ale is frequently the only decent choice at less reputable establishments. I had no idea they made spacecraft too.
Re:Sierra Nevada (Score:5, Funny)
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*golf clap*
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Dude, can it with the jokes. This thing barley survived its landing.
Too much? Want more? I've got a tun of them.
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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?
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the part that failed was something that was a standard part for military jet aircraft
and...
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.
you'd have thought they'd have done engineering tests on the thing before giving it the certification first time around..... :-)
I think a
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you'd have thought they'd have done engineering tests on the thing before giving it the certification first time around..... :-)
What makes you think they didn't do engineering tests on the part prior to the flight? As I pointed out, it was a part used on other aircraft, which is where the certification came from in the first place. That means engineering data is available from not just engineering tests but also repair logs of numerous aircraft that have this part installed and thousands of hours of flight history to back it up. No doubt that engineering data is going to be used in the accident review.
I think a more pertinent question is - why did it fail this time, not whether the part is just generally deficient mas is the implication if they'll ground all aircraft that use it (do they ground military aircraft like they do commercial ones?).
TFA says that it failed to deploy, which suggests there is nothing wrong with it as landing gear anyway, so it had nothing to do with weight and speed of the aircraft.
Yes, military aircraft are g
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do they ground military aircraft like they do commercial ones?
Yes, when I was in the USAF they often grounded whole fleets. The C5As were out of service for a few months after a piece of equipment used to service the tail fell over and killed a guy. Unlike civilian planes, when military planes get grounded it seldom makes the news.
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I still think that "the pilot would have walked away" is the wrong thing to say. It is the kind of thing that NASA management used to say about the regular, everyday *failures* that eventually caused the destruction of the Challenger, and later the Columbia.
Don't say the pilot would have walked away. Say, "Good thing we didn't have a pilot on board this time, he *could* have been killed" which is also true, because once you have a failure and an unplanned event, lots of other things can go haywire as well
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Everything you say is going to happen with an engineering review of the accident. Even though this was a civilian flight test (or rather even more so because it was civilian and not military), the FAA is going to be all over this and treat it just like an accident investigation like any other flying mishap. It certainly is going to be a major point of review on granting any flight worthiness certificate on this vehicle and any attempt to whitewash this incident during that review process is going to have
Re:Would have walked away? (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA, the reporting is fine, you are doing a lousy job at reading.
It was unmanned... that is why there are no injuries.
The damage was such that if a pilot had been in there he would have been able to walk away.
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The article says "a pilot would have walked away", and the Slashdot summary says "the pilot would have walked away". The later implies a pilot existed.
I realize the finer points of English are difficult for internet flamers like you. But please try harder.
Well, the discrepancy may be because the DreamChaser is intended to have only one on-board pilot; it's pretty small. "A pilot" suggests there might be more than one, but only one would walk away. "The pilot" suggests there would only be one, and he would walk away. I agree, though, that it should've first been made clear that the flight was unmanned.
And also, as even the man in the street knows, you can use the definite article for hypotheticals sometimes.
(Also, I think you meant "latter," not "later.")
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"The pilot would have walked away, if the flight were not unmanned."
vs
"The pilot would have walked away, if his legs hadn't been replaced with wheels as a child."
"Would have" was used appropriately in both sentences, yet the meanings of them are drastically different. Use if the definite article "the", without establishing which specific pilot we're talking about (the one who flew the test or a hypothetical pilot), is not proper English. English has an indefinite article, "a", which would have made the sen
God schmod, I want my BIONIC MAN! (Score:2)
Oh wait, this isn't Russia.
If this was an American pilot, obviously he was just too lazy to walk away and had to wait until they winched him out of the cockpit and lowered him onto his Little Rascal XXL.
yeah, yeah,
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Before I RTFA I too thought that a pilot was injured or killed. It should have been noted that the flight was unmanned or autonomous.
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I agree - the summary could have been much clearer had a single word been included...
"The unmanned test article for Sierra Nevada's ..."
or
"... causing the unmanned vehicle to flip over."
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RTFA, the reporting is fine, you are doing a lousy job at reading.
The summary is lousy for not including the information that the flight was unmanned, especially given the "would have walked away" quote. Reading the article is supposed to be an option if you want more detail, not to clear up the ambiguity of a bad summary.
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Yes, but the craft flipped over, so he would have spilled his beer.
Slashdot editing (Score:5, Funny)
At least they didn't say "There were no survivors".
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Doh a test flight no pilot.
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But according to the article there were no injuries. So the pilot would have walked away except for what? That the pilot is a paraplegic?
For you, the only reason for not walking away is being a paraplegic? What about "The pilot would have walked away, but he was carried on the shoulders of the grateful passengers to a waiting limousine. 'All through the ordeal, all I could think about was that scene at the beginning of The Six Million Dollar Man [youtube.com] where a similar craft crashes' said one of the survivors. 'The fact that our pilot was able to hold it together, and get us safely down... well, he's a hero in my eyes.'"?
Re:Would have walked away? (Score:4, Funny)
And if he doesn't, well, we can rebuild him. [youtube.com]
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But according to the article there were no injuries. So the pilot would have walked away except for what? That the pilot is a paraplegic?
No, he would have walked away, but he was killed in the accident.
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So the pilot would have walked away except for what? That the pilot is a paraplegic?
Or it crashed in a swamp and the alligators ate him.
This is Slashdot. The details will be made clear in subsequent duplicates of this post.
Re:What a waste of taxpayer dollars... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISS should be a private venture, as it gives no returns whatsoever.
So in other words, it shouldn't exist at all. What private company is going to embark on an endeavor with "no returns whatsoever"?
Of course, you're only talking about monetary returns. In terms of scientific value, the ISS experiments and observations have been some of the most productive projects in recent years.
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They're also pushing the length of time humans can remain in micro-gravity which is needed for a trip out of near-earth orbit to other bodies. So yeah, the ISS doesn't produce anything immediately evident, but they do improve our general understanding of space travel and improve international co-operation on further goals in space exploration.
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Of course, you're only talking about monetary returns. In terms of scientific value, the ISS experiments and observations have been some of the most productive projects in recent years.
How many of those experiments needed to be performed on the ISS. The complaint isn't with experiments in space, it is with the ISS. There is no reason that you can't launch a satellite, have an unmanned experiment performed, and then de-orbit the satellite.
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Well, since one of those observations is "what happens to humans in microgravity under these conditions?", an orbital vessel of significant size and duration is necessary. Once you have that, it's cheaper to load experiments into that than to build separate launch vehicles and try to automate it all. The humans need to do something to occupy their time.
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Except you're then in a circular argument: the purpose of having humans in space is to study humans in space. Why is that important enough to spend $100,000,000,000+ on over the last few decades?
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The purpose of having humans in space is to be able to study humans in space. The purpose of studying humans in space is to better understand the human body and its processes, which has already led to advances in medicine, especially in the areas of degenerative conditions like osteoporosis and atrophy. The purpose of seeking better medical treatment for such conditions is to improve the longevity and comfort of all mankind.
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The purpose of having humans in space is to be able to study humans in space. The purpose of studying humans in space is to better understand the human body and its processes, which has already led to advances in medicine, especially in the areas of degenerative conditions like osteoporosis and atrophy. The purpose of seeking better medical treatment for such conditions is to improve the longevity and comfort of all mankind.
Citations? This is a LOT of spending to justify it primarily based on its impact to some gains in osteoporosis and atrophy. That research would have to have a HUGE impact on quality of life for the elderly to support a $150B investment, plus the ongoing costs to maintain it. I'm not an expert on those conditions, but I'm not aware of any big breakthroughs that have really had an impact on the treatment of these conditions.
I don't think this was really the reason for building the ISS. It was more about g
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Citations? This is a LOT of spending to justify it primarily based on its impact to some gains in osteoporosis and atrophy.
There's a lot [nasa.gov] more research than that. Those are just two off the top of my head.
...a $150B investment, plus the ongoing costs to maintain it.
Check your numbers. The $150B figure is the high estimate for the total cost so far, including the initial investment, maintenance, and operations, a significant portion of which was paid by private companies and other countries. NASA's actual budget is under $3 billion annually.
I'm not an expert on those conditions, but I'm not aware of any big breakthroughs that have really had an impact on the treatment of these conditions.
And you'll never be aware of any such thing, because that's not how medical research works. We don't just venture forth on a grand adventure and retur
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There's a lot [nasa.gov] more research than that. Those are just two off the top of my head.
That is a list of all of NASA publications, not just ones that necessitated putting humans in microgravity for long durations, which is the only mission that can only be performed on something like the ISS.
And you'll never be aware of any such thing, because that's not how medical research works.
Having a degree that qualifies me to perform medical research and being employed by a company that performs medical research, I do understand the nature of basic research.
That's why I'm skeptical of such claims. Rarely are advances like this made by ad-hoc experiments on a few subjects in a space station
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There are a lot of things that can/need to be worked out on the ground before creating permanent settlements in space, possibly the biggest being radiation protection outside of the Van Allen belts. But there is one thing which absolutely cannot be done on the ground, and that's figuring out what happens to mammals (and other critters, but that's going to be our highest priority) in microgravity. The type of person approved for space missions will not want to go on a trip that may leave them unable to ret
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I think, as a taxpayer, I'd rather "waste" $100B+ over nearly 20 years than fritter away $1,484,318,908,882+ blowing people up in wars that started seven years later.
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Of course, you're only talking about monetary returns. In terms of scientific value, the ISS experiments and observations have been some of the most productive projects in recent years.
Indeed, much of the scientific work will eventually be folded into commercial products that will in fact result in "monetary returns".
Re:What a waste of taxpayer dollars... (Score:5, Informative)
With a crappy economy, record debts to China, and collapsing income, why is the US wasting its time with these boondoggles?
Because there is going to be a future to America, and at some time if you want to have a stronger economy you need to invest into technology development.
BTW, the Dream Chaser vehicle is a private venture. That some NASA funds (hence U.S. taxpayers footing the bill) may be used for its development, that isn't the only source of investment capital or even the largest source for that matter. The idea is that the Sierra Nevada Corporation is going to be using this spacecraft for both government contracts as well as private commercial spaceflight... presumably space tourism as well as launching "microsatellites" and other commercial enterprises in space. If the NASA funds were cut entirely, this vehicle development would continue.
There certainly is no reason to complain about private individuals wanting to dump money on spacecraft when many times this amount is being spent on lipstick and reality television programs. Seriously, this kind of complaining is sort of pointless and demonstrates incredible ignorance of what is even happening here.
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'then'?
You're awesome.
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I'm curious as to what your normal reading matter is, that "Cruz" jumped to your fingertips before "cruise".
Re:Walked away (Score:5, Funny)
We have the technology... (Score:1)
This is progress. Back in the 70's, it would have cost SIX MILLION DOLLARS for the pilot to walk away from an accident like this.
Everytime I see the Dream Chaser I think of this (Score:1)
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"Flight Com, I can't hold her, she's breaking up, she's breaking u..."
"Would have walked away" (Score:1)
Peter Pan. I'm captian of the Dream Chaser (Score:2)
~ Yes indeed, if it's a fast ship.
~ Fast ship? You've never heard of the Dream Chaser?
~ Should I have?
~ It's the ship that made the Emerald City Run in less than twelve cowznofskis. I've outrun Middle Kingdom dragons. Not the local luckdragons mind you, I'm talking about the big Morgoth-bred firedrakes now. She's fast enough for you old wizard.
.
Space is easy (Score:1)
Earth is rough.
But NASA doesn't like the approach that worked... (Score:3)
One of many innovative aspects of Burt Rutan's Spaceship One design was the design of the landing gear. Rutan's designs have a Bauhaus-like spareness to them - especially when pushing the envelope as in Spaceship One, his practice was to eliminate cost and weight by eliminating the complexity that drove them.
SSOne's landing gear is a perfect example - ordinary landing gear (such as used on the Shuttle) is heavy and complex, with lots of hydraulics to be able to deploy and retract, and even more large, heavy oleo strut stuff to absorb the impact of landing.
Rutan's insight here was typically brilliant: In flight, the landing gear never needed to retract, only deploy, and even that only once, reliably. The model became that of a switchblade knife: A powerful spring reliably forces the landing gear down to engage a locking catch. The comparatively spindly landing gear struts themselves are designed to be springy enough to absorb the expected landing impacts.
Of course, NASA can't bring itself to admire or declare acceptable what a "private cowboy" like Rutan has done, so they need to spend more money to figure out some other way, rather than adopt what's been shown to work quite well (at least for space vehicles that aren't obese, which is admittedly a foreign concept to NASA - the Shuttle was 20% overweight (!!), making it too heavy to launch Air Force satellites into polar orbit, one of the things that justified it in the first place!)
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FYI:New Objectivity is not Bauhaus.
the pilot would ahve walked away.. (Score:2)
on brand new Bionic Legs!