Posted: Tue, Sep 21, 2004, 10:47 AM ET (1447 GMT)
SpaceDev, the company providing the propulsion system for the leading X Prize competitor, announced Monday that it planned to pursue development of its own manned suborbital vehicle. The "Dream Chaser" design unveiled by SpaceDev bears a resemblance to the X-34, an experimental vehicle developed by Orbital under NASA in the late 1990s, but never flew. Unlike the X-34, the Dream Chaser would be launched vertically and carry three or more people to an altitude of 160 km before gliding to a runway landing. The vehicle would be propelled by a hybrid rocket engine six times more powerful than the one the company manufactures for SpaceShipOne, the suborbital vehicle built by Scaled Composites that will try to win the X Prize within the next few weeks. SpaceDev didn’t indicate when the vehicle would fly other than the "near future"; a scaled-up version capable of placing people into orbit could be ready by the end of the decade. SpaceDev also announced that it has signed a Space Act memorandum of understanding with NASA Ames Research Center to study hypersonic testbeds for hybrid propulsion; that would could also be used for Dream Chaser.
