Posted on 03/12/2005 5:28:16 PM PST by Arkie2
Space travel has long been the dream of millions, and the reality of a privileged few. But before 2010, six passengers will make the first commercial trip beyond the Earth's atmosphere — and they'll be travelling in 'the most ingenious aircraft ever designed', says Bryan Appleyard
"We as a species are different from other animals because we put our lives on the line to go and see what's out there. What Magellan did in 1521, for God's sake! You know how dangerous that was?"
This is Elbert L "Burt" Rutan, the hero of this story. He has long sideburns and eyes filled with a wild surmise. Your children and grandchildren may well be taught about him at school.
But, first, you need to know about the desert. It doesn't rain much in the American southwest, but, when it does, the water forms huge, shallow pools in the normally dry lake beds. Blowing one way, the wind pushes the water to one end of these beds; blowing the other, it pushes the water to the other end. This rocking motion smooths this flat land even further. And so, for thousands of square miles from the Mexican border up through California, Arizona and Nevada, there are vast tracts of hard earth, ironed by the elements to an unreal flatness. You can land 747s on this ground and any experimental fighter by Boeing or Lockheed can set down safely if it can't quite make it back to Edwards Air Force Base, Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, China Lake Naval Weapons Center, Nevada Test Site (Area 51 to all you geeks) or to any of the places so secret they have no names that mark the otherwise featureless maps of this wild and implausible region.
It is a landscape of dreams. "Dreamland", in fact, is the call sign of Area 51. Here is just scrub vegetation, sand, rocks, distant mountains, parched air, endless sky and, away from the interstates, the silentium dei - the silence of God. What else is there to do but dream dreams of great heights and stupendous speeds?
The mighty, hypersonic and utterly secret Aurora now flies out of Dreamland, as did the stealths, Blackbirds and U-2s. It was out here in 1947, at what was then Muroc but is now Edwards, that Chuck Yeager, supreme possessor of what Tom Wolfe called "The Right Stuff", flew a Bell XS-1 faster than the speed of sound. It was out here in 1967 that William Knight took his X-15 up to 4,520mph (mach 6.7).
And it was out here, at Mojave airport, a civilian testing site right next to Edwards, that, on April 18, 2003, Elbert L Rutan unveiled SpaceShipOne, probably the most ingenious aircraft ever designed, and White Knight, its airborne launcher, certainly the most beautiful.
"Why this shape?" I ask Burt as we stand in a hangar contemplating the White Knight. Why not?" he replies.
We fall silent for a few moments.
"It's your masterpiece, Burt."
"I know."
He's not so keen on the aesthetics of SpaceShipOne, but he's positively aroused by its successor, a larger version, now at the design stage, which, under the brand name of Virgin Galactic, will carry about six paying passengers into space. Burt can't show me the drawings of the new ship, but you can tell he wants to.
"It's a sexy-looking thing. It's something you look at and say, 'Wow! I want to fly that!' It's more than a coincidence that an aeroplane that looks good flies good too."
Burt's sideburns are long and dandyish. They are there, I conclude, to absorb the excess Right Stuff that squirts daily from his ears.
The first flight will be in about three years, if you believe Virgin, or "I'm not saying when," if you listen to Burt. It will carry — and this is very informed guesswork — William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver. Shatner is the favourite, as he will officially name the ship the VSS Enterprise. So both Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise and Ripley of Alien have signed up to pay $200,000 (just over £100,000) for the trip, but they don't yet know who will be on the first flight. If Ripley has anything to do with it, there will certainly be a giant, homicidal lizard. Victoria Principal, the former Dallas star, has also signed up. Burt and Sir Richard Branson will be on board, as, I think, will Branson's dad, Ted. Bill Cullen, the 63-year-old chairman of Renault Ireland, might be there too; he's the only one of the 21,000 applicants for tickets who has paid the whole sum upfront and, boy, is he gagging to be there.
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Bert Rutan is a tribute to the American entrepreneurial spirit, a visionary in the Wright Bros./Robert Goddard mold. In this bureaucratic age, that makes him as strange as a pterodactyl.
Best of on the flight. But - golly - putting your life on the line and venturing out is WHAT EVERY SPECIES does. That's not what makes us unique or great. Learn this and study this to whoever thinks that way - we are unique because we are made in the image and likeness of God. People need to understand that, and deal with it - honestly, openly.
This video is of the second flight of Space Ship One. It's about 3 minutes long (5.36 MB) and covers from take-off to landing.
http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/video/X-Prize-flight-2.wmv
Or go to http://balsabusters.warp0.com/VIDEOS.html where both videos can be found at the top of the page.
A video from a camera mounted on an expendable launch vehicle rocket can be found here: http://balsabusters.warp0.com/LAUNCH.html
A WILD SURMISE.?...
Nice..
Thanks!!!!!
It's a great turn of phrase and very apposite. It's taken from Keats:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Goes pretty well with the theme of exploration and new frontiers mentioned in the article, doesn't it?
Very nice. Thanks for digging that up.
I'm not that literate but the phrase is haunting.. and unusal..
Truly an excellent article on Burt. Thank you for finding it and bringing it to the freeper wingnuts.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when Rutan talks with client Fosset and backer Branson.
Three of the greatest visionaries alive today, or ever.
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