Dream Chaser Precursor: "HL-20 as a Personnel Launch System" ~ 1990 NASA Langley Research Center

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL-20_Personnel_Launch_System

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The HL-20 Personnel Launch System is a NASA spaceplane concept for crewed orbital missions studied by NASA's Langley Research Center around 1990. It was envisaged as a lifting body re-entry vehicle similar to the Soviet BOR-4 spaceplane design. Its stated goals were to achieve low operational costs, improved flight safety, and a possibility of landing on conventional runways. No flight hardware was built...

Predating and influencing the design of the Space Shuttle, several lifting-body craft, including M2-F2, M2-F3, HL-10, X-24A, and X-24B, were flown by test pilots from 1966 through 1975. The M2-F2 and the HL-10 were proposed in the 1960s to carry 12 people to a space station following launch on a Saturn IB. The HL-20 PLS concept was evolved from these early shapes, being further influenced by the Russian MiG-105 and especially BOR-4. The "HL" designation stands for horizontal lander, and "20" reflects Langley's long-term involvement with the lifting-body concept, which included the Northrop HL-10.

A lifting-body spacecraft would have several advantages over other shapes. With higher lift characteristics during flight through the atmosphere while returning from orbit, the spacecraft can reach more land area, and the number of available landing opportunities to specific sites would be increased. Deceleration loading during entry would be limited to about 1.5 G. This is important when returning sick, injured, or deconditioned Space Station crew members to Earth. Wheeled runway landings would be possible, permitting simple, precision recovery at many sites around the world, including the Kennedy Space Center launch site...

The Dream Chaser spacecraft is based on the HL-20 lifting-body design. It was developed by SpaceDev for the 2004 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition and was being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation for the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev). The crewed Dream Chaser was not selected by NASA for the final phase of development of commercial crew (CCtCap). However, the cargo Dream Chaser was selected by NASA for its Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) program.

Orbital Sciences Corporation has also proposed an HL-20 derivative for the second round of CCDev funding, the Prometheus spacecraft.

Both vehicles are proposed to launch unfaired atop a man-rated Atlas V launch vehicle...