Sierra Space completes acoustic testing of Shooting Star cargo module that will fly on first Dream Chaser launch
Sierra Space today announced that it has successfully completed acoustic testing of the Shooting Star cargo module that will fly on first ISS mission of its Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
During the Direct Field Acoustic Test (DFAN), the test team placed stacks of purpose-built loudspeakers – each one a highly-engineered acoustic device – in 21-ft-tall columns surrounding the spacecraft. Their goal was to test whether the structural elements of Shooting Star could withstand the acoustic environment of a launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket. Over a four-day period, test engineers blasted the spacecraft with a controlled sound field that was 10,000x higher intensity than the volume of a typical rock concert, recreating the sonic intensity of a launch. Shooting Star withstood acoustic levels greater than 140 dB for several minutes at a time, proving its flight worthiness.
The press release however made no mention as to when the launch will actually take place. Sierra first got the contract to build Dream Chaser in 2016, and was supposed to make its first flight in 2020. That launch has been repeatedly delayed, and is now four years behind schedule. Supposedly it was to take place this year on the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket in the spring of 2024, but was removed from that launch because of delays in preparing Tenacity for launch.
As of today, no new launch date has been announced, and though Sierra says Tenacity will be ready for launch by the end of this year, don’t expect it to happen before 2025.
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Sierra Space today announced that it has successfully completed acoustic testing of the Shooting Star cargo module that will fly on first ISS mission of its Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
During the Direct Field Acoustic Test (DFAN), the test team placed stacks of purpose-built loudspeakers – each one a highly-engineered acoustic device – in 21-ft-tall columns surrounding the spacecraft. Their goal was to test whether the structural elements of Shooting Star could withstand the acoustic environment of a launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket. Over a four-day period, test engineers blasted the spacecraft with a controlled sound field that was 10,000x higher intensity than the volume of a typical rock concert, recreating the sonic intensity of a launch. Shooting Star withstood acoustic levels greater than 140 dB for several minutes at a time, proving its flight worthiness.
The press release however made no mention as to when the launch will actually take place. Sierra first got the contract to build Dream Chaser in 2016, and was supposed to make its first flight in 2020. That launch has been repeatedly delayed, and is now four years behind schedule. Supposedly it was to take place this year on the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket in the spring of 2024, but was removed from that launch because of delays in preparing Tenacity for launch.
As of today, no new launch date has been announced, and though Sierra says Tenacity will be ready for launch by the end of this year, don’t expect it to happen before 2025.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I have long had a soft spot for Dream Chaser as another stab at a space plane (er, lifting body), but I have to say that these compounding schedule delays have done nothing to build my confidence that they can can develop a crew vehicle out of it.
Or, for that matter, that they could have delivered a crew vehicle any faster than Boeing has, had they been given the CCtCap contract instead.
Richard M,
Sadly, I must agree. Unlike the protagonist, Jack, of the venerable nursery rhyme, Sierra Space – even spun off and under non-founder management – has proven to be neither nimble nor quick. Hence, it’s failure to jump atop ULA’s candlestick. I increasingly fear that what I still think will be a large market for “escape pods” for future large, rotating space stations, will likely be served by other providers.
From the linked BusinessWire article:
That is easy to believe. Most acoustic testing occurs inside specially-built acoustic test cells, which are large enough to test payloads that fit within rocket fairings and have thick concrete walls that reflect the sound and prevent the noise from echoing throughout the campus. There are plenty of these test cells around the country, and one could have been rented for a week, a month, or however long it takes to set up, test, and remove this module. I’m surprised that they were allowed to perform such a loud test in a regular building, considering that the sound is loud enough and includes frequencies low enough to kill a human being. Forget bleeding eardrums; your chest would vibrate at the natural frequency of your organs, causing them to rub against each other until they are liquified like jelly.
I wonder how long it took to create this unusual test, and could this kind of thinking be why Dream Chaser has taken so long to develop? It is kind of like reinventing the wheel when one is available just down the street at the wheelwright shop. I used to think that the complexity of a lifting body reentry vehicle (as opposed to the capsule method, chosen by the Man In Space Soonest project in the late 1950s, because of its simplicity and rapid development cycle — probably the same reason that SpaceX and Boeing went with that method), the small size of Sierra Nevada/Sierra Space, combined with the lack of flight experience by either company was the reason for the delays.
Like Richard M, I hope Dream Chaser succeeds and is quickly developed into a manned version. We will be needing both men and materiel transported to the several commercial space stations in the next few decades, and the runway landing concept has potential for rapid delivery of space experiments to their scientists here on Earth. A short drive from the local airport can be much faster than fishing a capsule out of the drink or lugging returned items through the desert on landing — half a world away.