Dream Chaser - The Dream Of Lifting Body Space Planes

I remember when those photos were published and thought that is a cool design and when I saw dream chaser I told people the Soviets designed that!!! Thank you for proving my theory now FACT!!!

Another test pilot who was slated to fly Dyna-Soar was Albert Crews. He still volunteers as a docent at the Sands Space History Center just outside the gates of CCSFS and I highly recommend taking a tour if you ever happen to be in the area. He was also chosen as an astronaut for the MOL program before it too was cancelled. Really fascinating individual to talk to if you happen to run into him at the museum. Honestly, most of the docents have worked at the Cape in some capacity and all have great stories to tell.

This Soviet system is quite unique. It used metal for heat shielding and ceramic joints (hinges of special design) in order to isolate cold volume inside of the ship from hot metal shielding.

Thank you for sharing the journey of our Dream Chaser spaceplane. We look forward to the launch of Tenacity!

As a long time sub to Scott, I have to reiterate that the quality and editing is always mind-blowing (not even going into the depth of research). Thank you Scott. Fly Safe.

Still the most beautifully named spacecraft out there

God speed Dream Chaser

What I love is that the scifi show 'Farscape' even modeled this and showed it off. got to love when real world concepts end up in scifi

Interesting that in 2005 when Mark Sirangelo (CEO of SpaceDev at the time) visited Russia, he made a promise that, when Dream Chaser was finished, he would put the names of the Russian team that worked on BOR program right next to those of the American teams.

The Space Shuttle remains quite a beautiful design. Especially in plan projection.

I've been really excited about dream chaser ever since their drop test in 2017. I really hope their first flight goes well.

The large wings on the space shuttle were needed to give the aircraft large amounts of crossrange. That was needed because the military wanted to do one orbit flights, and return to the launch site. Probably to capture USSR satellites. I feel like Scott did a video on this?

I actually got to talk with John Curry about a decade or so ago as an interview for a school project. It was quite the experience and he even gave me the dream chaser pin he had on his suit which I still have to this day.

I really hope Dream Chaser finds lots of success, though really only because of my nostalgia for the shuttle. I grew up on the space coast, and that beautiful black and white bird was plastered on everything. Everyone used to be so proud to even be part of the support structure for the people who made those things fly. I have no control over what systems get used for future spaceflight missions, but I hope they involve lots more tiled lifting bodies.

I remember being a middleschool student in 2013 when a representative from Sierra visited our science class and showed off their spacecraft. I had no idea anyone was planning anything similar to the shuttle and was told it would do the same duties as the shuttle but at a cheaper cost. Last summer I found myself driving near one of their facilities here in Colorado and I'm excited to see them bring that bird to life.

Glad to see the shout out for test pilot Steve Austin. Eventually he got hardware upgrades and became Scott Manley.

You forgot to mention the X-38, the closest we got to an operational lifting body craft until now. The prototype was over 90% complete with a reservation on a Shuttle to bring it up to the ISS. It was suppose to be a lifeboat first, but anyone with eyes could see that it was a viable crew transport. With Ariane 5 already man-rated and Atlas 5 coming online in a few short years you'd think that there's no way it wouldn't become operational, but in pre-Columbia days anything that was risk to Shuttle's supply chain ended up going nowhere and so did the X-38

It's always interesting to see how many Soviet designs inspired NASA and vice versa.

Really excited about Dream Chaser's potential, especially as a "lifeboat" of sorts. Have a few of these on a space station, ready to detach and speed an astronaut or sensitive experiment down to ground level much faster than a capsule could. Think emergency surgery like an appendectomy or something. It'll be a perfect supplement to Starship.

Scott your content is absolutely enthralling. I swear every time I watch your videos I get most of the way through and I think to myself, "WTF where did my last 10-20 mins go?" It's like being a little kid again. Thanks so much for making it.