Prize puts eyes on next frontier

MOJAVE, Calif. -- The skies above this high-desert town have seen a lot of history.

Prize puts eyes on next frontier
A private U.S. team plans to test a manned spaceship in a quest for a $10 million award that could launch an era of space tourism

MOJAVE, Calif. -- The skies above this high-desert town have seen a lot of history.

It was here that Chuck Yeager showed the "right stuff" and pushed a bullet-shaped experimental aircraft through the sound barrier for the first time on Oct. 14, 1947.

And it was here that other test pilots followed, pushing other envelopes and leading the march to U.S. manned space travel pioneered by Alan Shepard's 1961 journey.

Another piece of aviation history may be written here early Monday when the first private manned spaceflight will be attempted.

Shortly after dawn, a shuttlecock-shaped space plane strapped to a mother ship is to take off, beginning a journey that its developers hope will ultimately boost the craft to an altitude of 62 miles--the edge of outer space.

The pilot of SpaceShipOne--the person was to be identified Sunday--will become a genuine astronaut if the flight goes according to plan. And he or she will be the first American astronaut sent into space without taxpayers footing the bill.

Space experts view the voyage of SpaceShipOne as an important first step toward space tourism, which someday might be as routine as an airplane flight and a few nights in a hotel are now.

"In a nutshell, a revolution in spaceflight is imminent," said David Ashford, a British aeronautical engineer, space expert and author who is developing a space plane.

"Within 15 years, 1 million folks per year will be visiting space hotels. The main obstacle is mind-set," he said.

While not everyone may share his enthusiasm, experts agree that a successful flight by SpaceShipOne would be a vital step toward commercial competition in space travel. Monday's voyage comes as NASA is being forced to rethink its role.

The space plane "could be the trigger project that makes the scales fall from people's eyes so that they appreciate that [U.S.] space policy for the past 30 years has been badly mismanaged and that the revolution is nigh," Ashford said.

The project's developers are inventor Burt Rutan, who designed and built the two craft, and Paul Allen, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder and entrepreneur who helped with funding.

Scaled Composites, a Mojave-based company, built SpaceShipOne and the White Knight aircraft that will carry it on the first stage of the flight.

Monday's expedition is part of a global competition for the $10million Ansari X Prize offered by a foundation with offices in Santa Monica that is trying to hasten the development of commercial space travel.

The X Prize is modeled after the $25,000 Orteig Prize won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh when he made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

27 teams competing

Twenty-seven teams from seven countries are competing for the X Prize, which requires the winners to put a craft carrying three people into suborbital space and repeat the accomplishment using the same equipment within two weeks. The tasks must be done by the end of the year.

There will be only one person on SpaceShipOne when it flies Monday, so this initial trip does not count toward winning the prize.

But "a successful flight of SpaceShipOne, and the subsequent successful capturing of the X Prize, could help usher in the next space age," said Lori Garver, vice president of DFI International Corporate Services, a commercial space consulting firm.

"For the past 50 years, space has been the domain of governments--with only a few government employees able to travel to space for themselves," said Garver, who used to work for NASA.

The space agency, which is working on plans to return astronauts to the moon and on a manned mission to Mars, has welcomed Rutan's effort with SpaceShipOne.

"We are looking for people like Burt Rutan to help us," said Michael Lembeck, a NASA official responsible for identifying the types of vehicles needed to carry out missions in space.

He said Rutan's style of innovation was what NASA needed for the future. He noted that NASA accomplished a suborbital mission 43 years ago with Shepard's flight, but Rutan's design and plan enabled him to finesse what the space agency did with brute force.

Lembeck said he was certain that NASA employees from Southern California would be present at the event Monday, but he was unaware of any official NASA participation.

Rutan said the idea for SpaceShipOne's flight grew out of the X-15, an experimental craft that was carried into the air by a B-52 bomber and then used a rocket engine to boost itself into space.

That is what SpaceShipOne and the White Knight will attempt.

The two craft already have flown test flights to lower altitudes. And if all goes according to plan Monday, White Knight will take off from the small commercial airport in Mojave at 6:30 a.m.

Beyond the wild blue yonder

White Knight will carry the spaceship to an altitude of 50,000 feet just east of Mojave and then release it into a glide. The spacecraft pilot then will fire the ship's rocket motor for 80 seconds, sending it into a vertical climb at a top speed of Mach 3--three times the speed of sound.

When SpaceShipOne reaches an altitude of 62 miles, it starts a fall back to Earth. But for about three minutes the pilot will experience weightlessness and see the blackness of space with the stars bright in the firmament.

As the craft falls toward Earth, the pilot will reconfigure the wings and tail of SpaceShipOne to maximize drag, slowing the craft and reducing stress on the ship. On re-entry the pilot again will change the configuration of wings and tail to fashion the craft into a normal glider for a landing back on the same runway from which it took off.

Unlike the mainly metal X-15, which weighed 50,000 pounds, SpaceShipOne is made of light composite materials and weighs about 7,000 pounds.

It is impossible to predict what will happen if commercial development of space travel takes off as those backing the X Prize hope. But Rutan and Ashford are willing to make informed guesses.

Rutan, who developed the Voyager aircraft that completed a record-breaking flight around the world without refueling in 1986, estimates that suborbital flights could cost as much as $50,000 at first, but that with the development of second-generation craft, the price could fall to $7,000 to $12,000.

Ashford, the British aeronautical engineer, said he thinks the price of a ride into space could quickly drop to as little as $5,000.

"If space is to be our true next frontier, the cost of going into space must be drastically reduced and the technologies must become more reliable," said Garver, the consultant.

"Once . . . transportation to and from space [becomes] financially feasible for public travel as well as other industries, we will discover what the next space age has to offer."

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