And here I was thinking that Sierra had forgotten about the Dream Chaser. Turns out, they've scaled it. If you have grams you've created in orbit, here's how to get them back. At "1.5 g" which I take to refer to accelerational pseudograv 14.7 m/s2. (I'd hate for g to refer to grams here.)
In other spaceplane news, there's Dawn, filling in for the "New Shepard" - which (by contrast) Bezos has forgotten. That's testing Astral Materials' microgravity furnace, for four hours at a clip. So it won't need full orbit; it is doing some freefall before gently returning. Dream Chaser would be in orbit or near-enough, so can take longer before drag pulls it back to us. If Astral wanted it, the 'Chaser could test their furnace for that much longer.
I don't know if Dream Chaser ever intends to dock with one of those orbital stations we're getting next year. That would allow the furnace to be used for many days, with the return cargo being much larger. We might have ideas for shrinking that furnace, at that.
Alla'dhat's not nothing for unmanned cheap returns, but... doesn't Elon already have Starfall? That's a metric tonne in a a 2.5× 1.5× 0.5m container.
Maybe the issue here is that these grams being returned are just that fragile.
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