Sierra Nevada Corp’s “Dream Chaser,” a copy of the NASA-Langley HL-20 configuration, had its first test flight on October 26. Dropped from a helicopter, the glide to the Edwards Air Force Base runway apparently went smoothly… except that the left main landing gear failed to deploy. The vehicle skidded off the runway and suffered damage, but Sierra Nevada says that it can be repaired.
This particualr vehicle is not meant to be orbital, just an atmospheric test craft. I don’t know if it’s *almost* the final vehicle, kind of like a smaller version of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, or if it’s just an aerodynamically identical testbed with a few of the systems. The second airframe is meant to be orbital, to fly into space atop an Atlas V.
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