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Just totally coming out of the black/dark gray today. To be created for NASA's CCDev commercial space program competition, it will compete with the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser spaceplane. This is different than the COTS program SpaceX and Orbital developed their Dragon and Cygnus spacecraft for.
CST-100 would be based on the pressure vessel and mold line used for the Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft NASA was going to use for the Constellation lunar program, but lightened and with fewer bells and whistles (read: less bloat hard/soft-ware). 8 passengers vs. the 4 passengers Orion would have carried.
ALSO: on the heels of its near-perfect maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX was just awarded a $492 million contract to launch a large number of Iridium NEXT communications satellites. Falcon 9 is vast overkill for these satellites, so it'll launch several at a time
Launches to be from the spaceport at Vandenberg AFB, California - this to facilitate a polar orbit.
CST-100
Sierra Nevada/SpaceDev Dream Chaser
CST-100 would be based on the pressure vessel and mold line used for the Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft NASA was going to use for the Constellation lunar program, but lightened and with fewer bells and whistles (read: less bloat hard/soft-ware). 8 passengers vs. the 4 passengers Orion would have carried.
ALSO: on the heels of its near-perfect maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX was just awarded a $492 million contract to launch a large number of Iridium NEXT communications satellites. Falcon 9 is vast overkill for these satellites, so it'll launch several at a time
Launches to be from the spaceport at Vandenberg AFB, California - this to facilitate a polar orbit.
CST-100
Sierra Nevada/SpaceDev Dream Chaser