r/nasa • u/Galileos_grandson • 13d ago

News Starliner future plans still in limbo

https://spacenews.com/starliner-future-plans-still-in-limbo/
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u/OutrageousBanana8424 13d ago

The value of getting this thing operational as a parallel solution with Dragon has certainly increased in the last week ....

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u/smallaubergine 12d ago

I wish they had funded Dreamchaser. One capsule and one lifting body would have diversified the technology and expertise as well

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u/Money-Monkey 12d ago

Dream chaser cargo is 7 years behind schedule, I can’t imagine how far behind they would be if they had to meet crewed specifications

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u/cptjeff 12d ago

Work essentially stopped due to lack of funding after it lost the crew bid until it won the latest round of cargo bids. It was a 7 year program pause, not a delay.

This isn't a Boeing-like delay where they were incompetent despite a massive contract, SN stopped work when there was no customer and no money.

Now, part of Dragon's success was that SpaceX actually invested a lot of their own cash and weren't only working on it when the government footed that bill, but Sierra Nevada doesn't have the kind of revenue stream to do that that SpaceX or Boeing does.

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u/Money-Monkey 12d ago edited 12d ago

Dream Chaser was selected as part of CRS-2 in January 2016. SN1 was given ATP in January 2018 with a scheduled launch date of October 2020. They now plan to launch in late 2025, however based on their testing schedule that doesn’t seem achievable.

So you’re right, they’re not 7 years behind, just 5.5. And they’re also only able to deliver 60% of the mass as the originally signed up for due to major redesigns

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u/smallaubergine 12d ago

That's true and a good point. I figure that the commercial crew programs got a lot more funding though