NASA cancels Sierra Space’s contract for Dream Chaser cargo missions to ISS
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.
NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.
After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.
The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.
According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.
In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.
NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.
After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.
The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.
According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.
In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
How much money essentially burned?
Dream Chaser ——–> Defense Chaser
Still, a smaller and less connected player like Sierra still has to deliver a *flight* before getting most of those defense dollars, too.
Sad, though. It was clear that the DC program was struggling thanks in no small part due to limited resources, but I did not realize it was quite this bad. Commercial Resupply Services was still a good idea, but it’s clear that its batting average is no longer 1.000.
USAF has been getting way more than it’s money’s worth out of the X-37B. The C version has been on the drawing boards for years. They haven’t built it because they don’t need it. DoD has essentially no use for warm bodies in orbit while it has a satellite want list ten miles long and the Sentinel ICBM refresh to accomplish. When ISS goes away, the amount of gummint money devoted to meat in orbit will drop to nothing.
This is sad. Should have had a chance, but I fear with each passing month, it’s only voyage will be to a museum.
Hope I am wrong.
I always thought “Dream Chaser” was a silly name.
Muscular names like Mercury, Apollo, X-20, etc. always sounded more appealing, and frankly, more bold.
“Dream Chaser”, like its now apparent fate, always sounded more tentative, fleeting, and vaporous.
Like your kids, never name something dear to you with odd connotations. It/they may just grow up that way.
Like most start ups–like most people–they are hurting for money.
VCs are the problem–they are far more risk averse.
Before SpaceX, they thought you couldn’t make money.
When Elon proved them wrong–they fear going against him same as they feared going against ULA.
Maybe a few more computer start-ups will do well and throw a few pesos their way.
There needs to be some way to sweeten the pot–for every dollar/share they own in bizspace, a dollar/share of other holdings is tax free.
You have to shove a pill in some hot dogs before Fido will eat it.
I would like to see the design flight proven and tested.
Then three of them built and if need be , be placed into a mothballed condition along with all the equipment needed to build more.
They would be great people movers for future private space stations. We just do not have the destinations for them yet.
Makes me wonder- How can they modify contract and let Sierra off the hook, while Boeing is still spending half billions on starliner to deliver what was contracted? Dragon and Cygnus also presumably had to deliver under commercial resupply. The article makes it seem like the contract was for Sierra’s benefit and implies Sierra is financially or technically unable to continue.
I think it makes sense to similarly close out and write-off starliner.
Sad because it’s more elegant to fly back and land on a runway like nature intended.
Unfortunate but, at this point, not too surprising either. I would say the odds of Dream Chaser flying even by late 2026 have now fallen below 50%. Even if the whole program is cancelled, though, there is so much else going on that the impact on overall American space endeavor will be miniscule. We can reasonably expect more outright corporate and project failures over the next few years as well as more redirections of effort toward defense applications.
Hello Jeff,
Well, Sierra is not really a startup, though. It is a privately held spin-off of Sierra Nevada. SN was always a defense contract focused company; Sierra was spun off to focus on riskier commercial capabilities like DC without mucking up SN’s books. If Sierra Space is now shifting to defense contracts, well, the ironies would abound, wouldn’t they?
But yes, it’s clear that lack of resources has been hobbling Dream Chaser development. When initial fabrication of the first DC (Tenacity) was completed, they immediately laid off a lot of staff.
Complicating matters was Sierra’s decision to employ thrusters which feature the ability to run as hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thrusters for low thrust and switch to kerosene/peroxide bipropellant mode for higher thrust levels. No one has ever done such a thing before, and it’s clear that getting these thrusters successfully through the testing regime has been more difficult than anticipated — but then, it probably shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
Dream Chaser offers some legit unique capabilities, like greater cross-range and lower g-forces on reentry. But the way in which Sierra went about pursuing them has just been loaded with problems, and they have not had the resources to overcome those problems very easily. It makes you wonder if these capabilities are worth the hassle.
Hello Dick,
Yeah, unfortunately, this looks like a prime candidate for Berger’s Law. And if indeed the test flight does not happen until 2027, it”s getting hard to see how it could ever fly a cargo mission to ISS, unless ISS is extended past 2030.
All of this only makes SpaceX look more impressive. People may dislike Elon’s public persona, but he piloted a company that consistently made good decisions and executed good follow through, not least thanks to a superb organizational culture. Meanwhile, the very quiet and very apolitical Ozmens have presided over a Sierra org culture that, if the rumors are accurate, looks a bit like a trash fire.
Meanwhile, a chap who used to work on Dream Chaser but is now employed at SpaceX, working on Starship, tweets out a blunt response to Sierra Space’s announcement:
“I spent years tiling this ship. Drilling composites and making every detail perfect. Management was a disaster and even tried to convince us they were on par with SpaceX. Now that I work on starship comments like that sound even more childish than before. Rip chaser. Never to be.”
https://x.com/AlexanderJ91756/status/1971508045760098567
This seems to underline the steady scuttlebutt I hear about problematic management at Sierra.
It’s sad. I always had a soft spot for this vehicle. I thought there was a genuine market niche for it. But it may well never fly now; or if it does, only for a destination-less test flight or two.
Too much of the space fan community is into “kewelism” as opposed to economic practicalities in a business where everything is insanely expensive and spending a cent on press release looks is a cent wasted.
P.S. One more point: I’m now hearing from numerous sources that Sierra Space is conducting layoffs this weekend. Nothing in the news yet, and I don’t know how many people are affected. But a lot of Sierra peeps are announcing their departure on LinkedIn today. This would be (from what I can make out) the third round of major layoffs at Sierra in the last 24 months.
Sad to see, but it sounds like it was inevitable, given the trajectory that the DC project was on. Hope they land on their feet somewhere quickly.
Murcek,
Oh, no doubt. But in fairness, it was hardly common knowledge even in much of the space industry just how problematic the actual management at Sierra Space had become, or how starved of resources Dream Chaser had become once the spinoff happened. All most people saw was just a very cool looking spaceplane.
It’s still not clear to me that Dream Chaser or something similar to it couldn’t have made it off the starting blocks by now, or found a profitable niche in the orbital cargo delivery market, had it been well run and properly resourced. But Sierra’s poor management and org culture has made the determination of that question opaque, and perhaps moot now.
Unlike most of life, good enough absolutely kills better in the space bidness.
The main current of this thread is that there will be more rather than less “space stations” in the future. I’ll fade that bet.
CEOs still have this idea that you can downsize your way to success. Often, it is management, not labor, that is the problem.
I hope Bezos or some Daddy Warbucks can buy them out, bring back some workers, and boot the suits.
There was a recent article at THE SPACE REVIEW that has me feeling better about Blue Origin, where Limp was brash enough to ask Bezos “is this a business, or a hobby?”
I love that.
I used to work security for a grocery warehouse.
Management has always treated security with less respect than janitors. If you are doing your job, you are looking at the grounds.
“That guard ain’t doing anything! I’m not paying for some #@#& to stare out into space–give him some work to do.”
One clipboard turns to seven.
Then they opened up the back gate, after I told them not to. One man can’t watch that whole place. Next thing you know, I’m writing War & Peace, COVID temperature crap.
“That guard ain’t doing anything! He’s got his head down!”
I had enough.
“Do you want a guard? Or do you want a clerk?!”
Of course, folks at guard companies will side with the client against the guard.”
Then they hire gangstas who don’t show up to work at all.
I used to work at Toys R Us many moons ago–but that grocery warehouse was the worst. Bad health and vision knocked me out of aviation, electronics.
I am greatly saddened that Sierra Space is having such difficulty. I don’t know whether it is a design, manufacturing, or financial problem, but it bodes ill for the company’s Life space station module, too.
___________
John wrote: “I think it makes sense to similarly close out and write-off starliner.”
Boeing’s choice to continue spending on Starliner is probably a prestige decision. If they fail there, then they will have difficulty with future contracts. NASA already will not accept bids or proposals from Boeing for past problems, so the company needs to rectify that situation and get back in NASA’s good graces. I suspect that Boeing counts on Starliner to go a long way toward that end. To quit and fail would only prove NASA’s point.
___________
Richard M wrote: “Complicating matters was Sierra’s decision to employ thrusters which feature the ability to run as hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thrusters for low thrust and switch to kerosene/peroxide bipropellant mode for higher thrust levels. No one has ever done such a thing before, and it’s clear that getting these thrusters successfully through the testing regime has been more difficult than anticipated — but then, it probably shouldn’t have surprised anyone.”
When working on your first flight article, it is best not to get too fancy. After you have a steady income, then trying new things is better. I think that was one of the reasons that SpaceX was more successful; they got their rocket working and generating income before they spent real money on reusability. If they went straight for reusability, they would have gone broke right away.
Hello Murcek,
Just so. Bill Gerstenmeier said something along these lines in his Starship presentation at Glenn earlier this month. “I get what I call a minimum viable solution,” Gerstenmaier said. “I don’t really understand why it works, but somehow it works, so we’re going to use it, we’re going to monetize it, we’re going to make it work.” That might well be the SpaceX motto. Or one of their mottos.
I’m still not sure there’s a business case for a space station, or at least not a permanently crewed one, given the current price of transport to orbit. Something like a crewed Starship outfitted for research and sent into orbit for a few weeks before returning may well scratch whatever itch there is in the very small community of potential customers better than any of the stations on the books. Eager Space did a thoughtful YT video on that question not long ago.
I’d love to see Vast prove my suspicion wrong, though.
The only thing I do not like about this ship design is the fact it does not have a front wheel. Unless I am mistaken about that.
I wonder if it could be adapted to fit on a Falcon heavy?
FH might be enough to launch an HL-42 size lifting body:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-42_(spacecraft)
What also hurt HL-42 was that, for the longest time, no rocket could lob more than 20 tons to LEO.
Shuttle, was comparable to SLS in power, but its payload was about the same.
You also had competing visions. One group wants a spaceplane—another wants winged rocket stages. The result of that—and political turnover—is that nothing gets built.
The worst thing space advocates can do is snipe at each other’s projects, because that just encourages politicos to kill everything.
Human vs robotic
Civilian vs Military
Public vs Private
Solid vs liquid
Pump-Fed vs Pressure-Fed
etc.
Yeah, it is still a front skid and two rear wheels. In fairness to Sierra, their engineers spent a lot of time on this question, and they concluded that a skid not only saved a lot of weight but was also more reliable than a wheel.
It is unclear to me whether the bigger crewed DC-200 Dream Chaser (which I assume is basically dead now) would have retained the skid, but the one render I have seen from Sierra which speaks to this still has a skid. So maybe they would have tried to sticking with it, if the program had been more successful.
https://aviationweek.com/space/sierra-space-details-spaceplane-habitat-road-map
I’m a SpaceX fan, but like I said earlier, I always had a soft spot for Dream Chaser. I really liked the unique capabilities it offers, and I have said so repeatedly in this another fora. But it isn’t SpaceX fanboys or politicos that dealt this blow to Dream Chaser or even had a minor role in doing so. It really does seem like it was program mismanagement and refusal to properly resource DC on the part of Sierra leadership. And it caught up with them. They’ve been working on it for over 15 years, and it’s been 9 years since they won the CRS contract, and they are still not close to launch, and this after over $2 billion funding from NASA, with $1.4 billion in Series A funding in 2021 on top of all that.
Delivering crew and pressurized cargo to orbit is a difficult enterprise and there’s little margin for error or over-optimization. Sierra unfortunately blew past those margins. It doesn’t mean a spaceplane is never going to be viable. It just means this one probably is not.
Another rocketplane’s sad history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x988IQ1EBZM
That right there–about a bunch of suits coming in and booting engineers out the door–THAT’S why I don’t trust the private world….moneymen cannot be trusted.
Here is an interesting aside–and how the rocket racing leage and the Very Light Jet worlds intersected:
https://eclipsecriticng.blogspot.com/2009/06/few-lessons-learned.html
“My father passed away, suddenly, leaving us all shocked and saddened. The day before I buried him, one of the very few truly bad people I interacted with on the blog, sent me the following:-”
“‘See you in court, thief.'”
Jim Campbell, Editor-In-Chief/CEO
Rocket Racing League X-Racer Mk 1 Rocket Pilot”
“Have you noticed, in life, how the really small minded people always have the longest job descriptions? Captain Zoom is a prime example. All through his mindless support of Vern Raburn he parroted whatever EAC released as ‘fact’, without bothering to engage even the tiniest part of his brain in the most basic question which faces everyone in business, all the time.”
“Will I get paid?”
“Thankfully, there is a ‘higher justice’, and Zoom later got hit for $80,000 when EAC went bankrupt. ”
I had no idea things got that ugly.
The VLJ, like Dream Chaser has the siren call of winged aviation.
While the airliner folks at Boeing don’t seem to know what they are doing–the Phantom Works guys do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F-47
X-37 flew because it had adequate funding from Uncle Sam–instead of dealing with VC slime.