The last thing I saw was that the flight of their carrier craft had been delayed until at least 2016. I havent heard in the media anything about SNC producing a scaled down version of Dreamchaser before this week so I wonder how much this announcement can be taken seriously as a competitor to anyone.

I may have been wrong in my comment on the post about Orbital looking for new booster engines. SNC’s vortex-cooled engines, inherited through their recent purchase of Orbitec, may have, in this situation, a next generation booster application.

As of 2 years ago, Orbitec’s 30,000-lb (13,600-kg) thrust liquid vortex-cooled engine, that Orbitec was developing for the U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Upper Stage Engine Program, was about 5 times smaller than the Merlins that SpaceX formerly intended to cluster in a 5 engine booster for dropping from Stratolaunch’s aircraft. So, …could we see a 150,000 lb. thrust VCCW engine pushing a DreamChaser into orbit in 5 years after a drop by Stratolaunch????

Stay tuned!!

Definitely competition on a smaller scale with SpaceX. Different sizes for different missions though.