Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "James Benson" in English language version.
A decade after HL-20's cancellation, Jim Benson, the founder of a small aerospace company called SpaceDev, looked through NASA's storage buildings and saw the HL-20's potential as a project that had already received huge amounts of development money. Like several other entrepreneurs at that time, Benson wanted to get into the suborbital tourism business. He had looked at many vehicles, but only the HL-20 had such friendly flying characteristics combined with a thick pedigree of expensive studies. According to current SNC Space Systems Chairman Mark Sirangelo, '…we realized that the vehicle was one of the most tested and reviewed vehicles that had never flown.' SpaceDev executed a licensing agreement with NASA to use the HL-20's design for its new Dream Chaser suborbital spacecraft; somehow, the HL-20 had escaped The Archives. Shortly after, the Dream Chaser became a candidate for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Program. NASA still needed means of taking cargo to and from the International Space Station, and it had decided to partner with private companies to get one. But NASA didn't ultimately select the Dream Chaser for COTS. SpaceDev ended up signing an unfunded Space Act Agreement, a means of working with NASA that didn't involve funding, but that kept the company in the running for the next competition. Benson stepped down as Chairman of SpaceDev and founded the Benson Space Company to pursue the project. In the fall of 2007, Benson Space announced a partnership with United Launch Alliance to turn the Dream Chaser into an orbital vehicle by launching it on an Atlas V rocket. Benson and his team were going to try to go all the way to orbit. Jim Benson's own dream of going to space ended after he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor in the spring of 2008. He died that fall, and the Dream Chaser project reverted to SpaceDev. Several months later, the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced that it had purchased SpaceDev.
