Discussion on:

'Dream Chaser' is the latest hope for American spaceflight

The demo cartoon is somewhat inaccurate. The current proposal calls for mounting the vehicle on the tip of a Saturn 5 rocket, the same rocket used to launch Apollo missions to the moon. Unfortunately, as terrific as that technology was, all of the equipment used to build Saturn 5 rockets was deliberately destroyed, essentially burning the bridge behind us, thus leaving us with the shuttle and it's current booster technology with its inherent risks as our only choice. I am sure that we can still build something large enough and stick it in a silo below ground level so we can easily mount anything on top we wish, perhaps starting with whoever destroyed our original fabrication tech. Or we can always buy stuff from the Russians. They never got rid of their old tech.

We know it couldn't take off without some form of external fuel tanks so the video might have accidentally omitted a few things. We understand flying bodies well enough to know this can work. Now I'd just like someone to explain how they'll solve the challenges we had with our previous shuttle. The public has become much more educated about this topic so now we want more specifics about how this thing could/would really work, not just cute little videos.