Posted on 01/25/2004 10:36:55 AM PST by BenLurkin
MOJAVE - At a time when space travel existed only in the realm of science fiction, Aleta Jackson knew it was in her future. "I decided when I was 6 I would go into space," she said.
This was in 1954, three years before the Soviet satellite Sputnik launched the space age.
Now, nearly 50 years later, Jackson has not quite made the trek into space herself, but she is deeply involved in private-industry efforts to get there.
Jackson is a co-founder of Mojave-based XCOR Aerospace, a company working to provide safe, reliable and reusable rockets for access to space.
The venture has already been successful in proving its rocket engine technology with the EZ-Rocket, and it now has a marketing agreement with Space Adventures Ltd. to offer suborbital flights in its next-generation rocket vehicle under development. The new XCOR vehicle, dubbed Xerus, is designed specifically to transport tourists into space.
Jackson's passion for space was sparked by a book her father gave her as a child in St. Louis called "Tom Corbett-Space Cadet." Similar to Hardy Boys tales, but with action including space pirates, the book provided the young tomboy food for her fertile imagination.
"I made up my mind then I was going to go," she said.
Jackson may have made up her mind then, but her life has taken a rather winding path toward reaching her goal.
Her father, an aeronautical engineer, encouraged Jackson's interests, including a passion for building model airplanes.
"I would rather build airplane models than anything else" she said.
However, her very feminine, proper mother - whose own mother was a fashion model - didn't like her daughter's tomboy ways.
"Mother assumed I would be a graceful, gracious lady growing up. Wrong-O," Jackson said. "She would get me dolls and they would stay on my bed because I thought they were boring."
Instead, she fought space pirates from horseback and competed in model airplane combat.
These competitions pitted one flyer against another, swinging their airplanes in a circle on the end of a string. The objective was to cut the opponent's string or trailing streamers.
"I had a great advantage because I was female; the guys wouldn't take me seriously and I would rip them to shreds," Jackson said. "I was murderous."
Miserable in high school - "I was bored out of my skull" - Jackson finished early, attending summer school to earn enough credits to graduate when she was 15 years old.
She always knew she would go to engineering school, but her college career took a small detour first.
She attended Cottey College in Missouri, a small, two-year college for girls, where Jackson and the other 350 students were taught social skills as well as academics.
"The instruction is some of the best in the world," she said of Cottey, where the student-to-teacher ratio is extremely low.
There, Jackson majored in English, knowing that effective communication skills would be valuable in any field.
After a year, Jackson moved on to Indiana Institute of Technology, finally studying engineering.
While a student there, her godfather helped her find a job with McDonnell Aircraft Corp., working on the Gemini space capsules, as well as F-4 Phantom fighters.
"I was doing absolutely cutting-edge stuff," she said, earning a reputation at school as a genius because she was familiar with the very latest technology.
"The professors were three years behind me," she said. "It was very heady days."
However, that excitement came to a halt when Jackson was 21 and she dropped everything to take care of her father after he suffered a heart attack.
Five years later, after her father had recovered, she joined the U.S. Air Force.
"I thought it was my duty to earn my citizenship by serving my country," she said.
In the service, she met and married a pilot. An ensuing pregnancy led to an automatic honorable discharge. Sadly, the child did not live.
"I was very unhappy, but there was nothing to do about it," she said. "That was a really sad time, a rough time."
Jackson worked for several small research firms, but each went out of business, the victims not of bad concepts, but poor business management.
She moved on to an enjoyable job as a technical representative for the Xerox Co., fixing equipment in the field.
After about five years there, the now-divorced Jackson took her life savings and started writing science fiction.
This eventually led to a job as an office manager for Tuscon-based L5 Society, an organization dedicated to the idea of colonizing space.
"I ended up running the place," she said.
In 1986, the society merged with the National Space Institute to become the National Space Society and moved its headquarters to Washington. Jackson moved with it.
Once in the nation's capitol, she soon found herself as the managing editor of the Journal of Practical Applications in Space, a position she held for another five years.
Jackson was forced to quit that position when her mother became ill and she moved back to Arizona to take care of her for three months before her death.
It was there that Jackson took her next step towards space travel, one that would eventually move her from one desert to another.
Rotary Rocket founder Gary Hudson, a friend from her L5 Society days, approached her about his plans to create an innovative new means of space launch.
The cone-shaped Rotary Rocket was designed to be launched into space, returning to Earth using helicopter-like blades to slow its descent.
"I looked at the team he put together and liked what I saw," Jackson said.
She first joined the organization in Redwood City in March 1997, moving with the engineering operation to Mojave that November.
Despite successful test flights of its atmospheric test vehicle, the company ran into difficulty raising enough capital to get the unconventional project off the ground and liquidated much of its assets in a January 2001 auction.
Jackson and the rest of the propulsion engineers had been laid off in June 1999.
The core of this team pooled their savings to form XCOR Aerospace in September 1999.
"I had no idea when I was six years old I would be starting my own rocket company," Jackson said.
Michele Behrens has known Jackson since she first came to Mojave as a member of the Rotary Rocket team.
After putting in long hours working on their own space race, the rocket scientists would visit Behrens' video store on Friday nights for a week-ending "veg-out."
"I think the word to best describe her is determined," said Behrens, who has since worked with Jackson on projects for the Mojave Chamber of Commerce. "Give her a task and she gets it done … and she usually exceeds the goal."
The atmosphere of the Mojave Airport, where XCOR and several other rocket and space companies are based, encourages mutual support and success for such operations.
"We would not be here if it weren't for the Mojave Airport and the town of Mojave," Jackson said. "I can't think of living anywhere else right now."
But not all of Jackson's energies are focused on space and new technologies.
As a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, she also has an outlet for exploring the technologies of the past.
The society is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating pre-17th-century Europe.
"It's a joy to me to rediscover technologies," Jackson said, learning skills such as forging and medieval cooking.
"I really love putting on armor and picking up a sword and beating the crap out of (other members), then going to dinner with them," she said.
Another plus for participating is "it's not rockets," Jackson said. "When you want to relax, you turn on the other side of your brain."
Whether it's 13th or 21st Century technologies, Jackson is known for her grit and attention to detail.
Although it has been nearly 50 years, Jackson's determination to reach space herself has not dimmed.
"That's why I started the company," she said. "Even if I'm dead, they're going to take my ashes."
So you're also against the interstate highway system on Constitutional grounds?
Civil servants? Okay. Sounds like we actually agree. Guess I got confused about what you were talking about.
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