Sierra Nevada to challenge NASA’s decision to drop Dream Chaser

Sierra Nevada Corp. on Friday announced that it has filed a challenge to NASA’s decision to drop the company from the next round of funding for the space agency’s commercial crew program.

NASA last week awarded a combined $6.8 billion to SpaceX and Boeing to build spacecraft that would ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station.

SNC, whose Space Systems Division is based in Louisville, had been the third company still participating in the commercial crew program with development of its Dream Chaser vehicle.

The exclusion led to SNC laying off about 90 employees from its Dream Chaser program, or about 9.4 percent of Space Systems’ Colorado workforce.

In a statement released Friday, SNC contended that Dream Chaser had achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the SpaceX and Boeing proposals and at a lower cost than the Boeing proposal. Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion in the next round of commercial crew funding to continue development of their capsules that would begin taking crew to space by 2017.

“The company believes that, in this time of critical budget limits, it is more important than ever to deliver the best value to the American public,” the statement read. “With the current awards, the U.S. government would spend up to $900 million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that SNC proposed. Given those facts, we believe that a thorough review must be conducted of the award decision. The company feels it owes this extra effort to their employees, the over 30 Dream Team U.S. industry partners, 10 university partners, 10 international space agency and industry partners – all of whom believe in Dream Chaser and that the proposal that was submitted by SNC is the best choice for NASA and the American public.”

Dream Chaser was unique in the Commercial Crew Program competition because it was the only vehicle of the three that was not a capsule and was capable of landing on runways that could handle commercial aircraft.

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