Meet the U.S. Cities Vying To Be Spacecraft Landing Sites

The Dream Chaser has not made a single flight or carried any cargo into space. Yet space-savvy American cities are already rolling out the aeronautical equivalent of a red carpet, hoping to entice Sierra Nevada to land its spaceplane at their airports.

In March, Ellington Airport in Houston announced it was obtaining an FAA license to land the spaceplane. Last week at the important Paris air show, city officials from Huntsville, Alabama, announced the start of an engineering study to examine whether the spaceplane could set down at their airport. It's going to run them $200,000, a cost that is being eaten by Huntsville, several nearby cities, and the state of Alabama.

IT CAN SET DOWN ON ANY RUNWAY LONG ENOUGH FOR A 737 TO LAND

"Sierra Nevada has traditionally has done unmanned aerial vehicles and a lot of aeronautics in Huntsville," Mayor Tommy Battle told Popular Mechanics. "When we started talking to them about some future needs for the aerospace industry, Dream Chaser was a natural fit for us."

Why land a spaceplane in Alabama?

Hunstville is the location of Marshall Spaceflight Center, a hidden gem of the NASA research and development complex, and is known for testing the rocket engines that will power NASA's future heavy lifting Space Launch System. This is appropriate, since the Apollo rockets have a legacy rooted in Huntstville. The city is a hotbed for space research, since it hosts Marshall and a 158,000-square-foot "bio campus." Plus, the presence of Redstone Arsenal (which PM has visited) has attracted a pool of engineering talent and support network of entrepreneurial firms to northern Alabama. "We definitely want to feed what we have here and take it into the future," Battle said

This confluence of engineers, medical researchers, and space pros opens up some interesting business opportunities. Gene researchers could use Dream Chaser to launch experiments that study the ways cell membranes react to tampering in zero-g, and after they land the samples in Alabama they could then analyze the results in nearby labs. Dream Chaser could fetch ailing satellites, bring them to Huntsville for repair, and then ship the satellite and the spaceplane back to a launch pad in Florida for its next. The plane itself will need refurbishment, which could be done in Huntsville.

"I THINK THERE'S A LOT OF BUSINESS TO BE DONE IN SPACE."

All this fuss is a boon for Sierra Nevada. They designed Dream Chaser to deliver crew to the International Space Station, but lost out to SpaceX and Boeing. Undaunted, the company plans to launch the spaceplane on the tip of a rocket later this year, and will vie for a chance to deliver cargo for NASA (a second round of contracts will be issued this fall). Sierra wants to rent the Dream Chaser to private companies that would test components or run experiments in orbit. And while the spaceplane takes off via a rocket launch in Florida, it can set down on any runway long enough for a 737 to land.

Infrastructure questions

Huntsville International Airport has two north-south runway long enough for the Dream Chaser. Battle says the city's engineering study will examine the strength of the runway and its capacity for additional air traffic. If the engineers say the airport can handle it, the next step late this year would be obtaining an FAA license from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation to operate a reentry site. (For those wondering, here's the regulation, created as part of the Commercial Space Act and FAA rules.)

The FAA license—first issued in 2010 to SpaceX—depends primarily on public safety. This shouldn't be a problem for Huntsville and Sierra Nevada: Dream Chaser is a fairly low-risk spacecraft to soar into your town. The spaceplane comes in slowly, lands with precision, and has non-toxic propulsion.

Houston is the farther along in its quest to land the Dream Chaser. The Texas city is touting more than its history with the space program as a reason the spacecraft could find a home there. "The Dream Chaser spacecraft makes it an ideal test bed for biomedical, pharmaceutical, cellular and genetic research payloads," said Arturo Machuca, the general manager of Houston's Ellington Airport, in a statement. He envisions payloads launched in Florida, rocketed to low-Earth orbit, "then gently return them directly to Houston for immediate unloading." Of course, the researchers and facilities would be in Houston—an obvious benefit to the city's status and economy.

Battle doesn't see the Houston landing site as competition. Indeed, the more places Dream Chaser can land will diversify Sierra Nevada's business, benefitting both locations. "I think there's a lot of business to be done in space," Battle said. "I'm sure Houston will get its share of it, too."