If SNC needs any office space near JSC, there’s about 3 different 4-5 story buildings standing totally empty after the shutdown of the shuttle program.
SNC is based in Colorado, and has offices all around the country, including Durham, where they are full of NC State graduates. Mark Sirangelo, the executive VP of SNC, told me that the office was “all red and white inside.” For the Dreamchaser, they are leasing facilities from NASA/KSC and are going to add 500 jobs down there — hence their partnership with Space Florida.
NASA is a shell of what it once was and will never make a comeback.
Considering that Congress gave them full funding for the next generation of extra-orbital spacecraft development, and that they are going to have a test flight of the Orion capsule this year where the mission design is essentially equivalent to that of the Apollo 4 mission of 1967, which validated the Apollo flight control system and heat shield at re-entry conditions planned for the return from lunar missions. That is necessary to validate the same items – flight controls, the heat shield at 20,000 MPH (far faster than the Shuttle) etc. it is hard to agree with that.
On top of that NASA is fostering the development of at least one and probably two low-earth orbit vehicles, the Boeing CST-100, the SpaceX Dragon and the Dreamchaser from SNC. Test flights of all three are expected in the next 18 months.
I saw the ground-test article of Orion in the VAB last Thursday when I was at the Cape for the launch of the TDRS-L satellite. The flight-test article is about 2/3 completed in another building and will be put on a Delta IV in a few months.
