Space Race II

Space Race II: Not NASA's space program


By Irene Mona Klotz
United Press International


A UPI series exploring the people, passions and business of suborbital
manned spaceflight.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 7 (UPI) -- The faithful, the curious, and
of course the news media will gather on June 21 to witness the start
of a new era in human spaceflight.

They will not travel to Cape Canaveral, where all other human U.S.
expeditions to space have set sail. They will not be visiting the
Russian launch site, either, which until China's foray into space last
year was the only other place on Earth from which living beings have
left the planet.

The birthplace of this 21st century space race is California's Mojave
Desert, a remote and wind-swept region largely untouched by the hands
of time -- with one notable exception. The skies over Mojave have been
the backdrop for an armada of esoteric flying machines created by
wizard engineers employed by government agencies and private firms.

It was in Mojave airspace that test-pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound
barrier in October 1947. It is where, 39 years later, pilots Dick
Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck Yeager) took off in an
aircraft called Voyager, which was built by Rutan's brother Burt for a
non-stop journey around the world.

After flying 24,986 miles, the aviators landed back at Mojave nine
days after takeoff, the first pilots to circumnavigate the globe
without refueling. At the time, it was thought to be the last major
flight record.

Burt Rutan was far from finished, however. Having reached the sky's
limit, he set his eyes on space. Working quietly at his Mojave-based
firm, Scaled Composites, Rutan's team created SpaceShipOne, a vehicle
that one might expect to find in George Jetson's garage. It looks more
airplane than rocketship, with swooped-back vertical wings framing a
sleek, pointy nosed cockpit.

Rather than blasting off vertically from a launch complex,
SpaceShipOne hitches a ride beneath a matching jet aircraft, called
the White Knight, which carries its princess to an altitude of about
50,000 feet. The rocket quickly leaves the airborne ferry and fires
its single hybrid engine, created for Rutan by Spacedev, in San Diego,
for a steep and rapid climb.

SpaceShipOne has been setting milestones throughout its test-flight
program. In December, it became the first privately developed vehicle
to break the sound barrier. Last month, it set a record for the
highest altitude reached by a non-government airplane -- 211,400 feet.
Later this month, if all goes as planned, SpaceShipOne will become the
first private manned vehicle to reach space.

The company has not announced which of its pilots will become the new
Alan Shepard. Mike Melville has been in the cockpit during most of
SpaceShipOne's 14 test flights, including its third powered run last
month. For the first two flights Peter Siebold piloted the ship. The
earlier runs were unpowered drop glides, some of which carried Brian
Binnie or Doug Shane at the controls.

When the United States launched its first astronaut into space, it
chose the exact altitude that SpaceShipOne is heading toward: 62 miles
above Earth, an even 100 kilometers. It is high enough above the
atmosphere to be out of its grasp and high enough to see the planet as
an orb set in space.

Shepard's spacecraft, Freedom 7, did not have a window. When he
launched, on May 5, 1961, America was more concerned with the fact
that its Cold War adversary already had put cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in
orbit. By the time Virgil "Gus" Grissom climbed aboard his Liberty
Bell 7 for a follow-up flight, on July 21, 1961, the astronauts had
won their battle for ships with a view.

Grissom -- who was killed in 1967, along with two other Apollo
astronauts, in a launchpad fire -- said he was entranced by the
blackness of space set against "the blue of the water, the white of
the beaches and the brown of the land."

Grissom was the last American to make a suborbital flight.

Forty-three years later, that 15 1/2-minute ride will be worth $10
million and a place in the history books. The race this time is not to
showcase armaments to the Soviets, however. It is meant to parlay new
technology into a robust and expanding consumer service: tourism.

A study by Futron Corp., a space consulting firm in Bethesda, Md.,
determined that, by 2021, suborbital space tourism could bring in $700
million a year in revenue by flying 15,000 passengers who have the
means and the desire to go.

Space Adventures, a specialty travel agency in Arlington, Va., already
is marketing suborbital flights and expects to begin selling tickets
in a year or two. The company is even partnered with US Airways to
allow passengers to use Dividend Miles in exchange for a roundtrip
ride to space. The price? 10 million air miles or about $100,000 cash.

Though Rutan's Scaled Composites is the leading pioneer in this new
space frontier, the company is far from alone. More than two dozen
teams have registered as contestants in a competition known as the
Ansari X Prize and run by a non-profit foundation. The group plans to
award $10 million to the first team to fly a three-person craft to
suborbital altitude twice within two weeks. Rutan aims to reach the X
Prize-winning altitude during the June 21 test flight, but the craft
will not have the weight of three people -- just one. His formal bid
to win the X Prize is expected later this summer.

Rutan has spent several times the amount of the X Prize award to
develop SpaceShipOne -- his sole backer is Microsoft co-founder Paul
Allen -- and though the prospects for Rutan's competitors to win the
race are dimming, none are dropping out.

It is not for the money these teams have labored for years to come up
with a better way to travel to space; it is to demonstrate -- and
perhaps eventually cash in on -- the fact that there may very well be
a better, less-expensive, more-accessible way to travel to space than
what government-funded programs have been serving up for more than
four decades.

"The Wright Brothers may have been first in flight," said Brian
Feeney, head of a Canadian team chasing the X-Prize called the da
Vinci Project, told United Press International. "But you don't fly on
Wright Brothers' aircraft -- you fly on Boeings and Airbuses."

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Irene Klotz covers space and aviation for UPI Science News. E-mail