… it was the first time onsite acoustic testing has ever been conducted inside the SSPF, NASA’s historic staging location for space station-bound components.

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.

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.

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.