CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 12 (UPI) -- A California aircraft design company has taken its latest creation into the skies over the Mojave Desert for a milestone test flight a week after securing the U.S. government's first license to fly a reusable suborbital piloted spaceship.
The effort stands to draw considerable competition. More than two dozen other organizations, encouraged by the prospect of government launch licenses and a substantial financial prize, are working to meet or beat the accomplishments of the company, Scaled Composites. Several would-be rivals also have been making steady progress in designing passenger-carrying, reusable, suborbital rockets.
SpaceShipOne, the spacecraft portion of a turbojet-rocketship duo, fired up its newly developed hybrid motor last week. The rocket, which combines nitrous oxide and rubber propellant for 40 seconds, reportedly reached an altitude of about 105,000 feet while traveling at Mach 2, or twice as fast as the speed of sound.
Scaled Composites has targeted as its ultimate goal an altitude of 330,000 feet -- 62.5 miles above the ground -- and flying a trajectory long enough to create weightless conditions for several minutes. The company is run by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan and so far is the only U.S. firm to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly people in a suborbital spacecraft. It also is among the top contenders for a $10 million prize to send people to the edge of space in a privately developed ship.
"We're breaking new ground here," said Peter Diamandis, head of the X-Prize Foundation in St. Louis, which is sponsoring the competition. "There are at least three teams that have a viable ability for flight before the end of the year, (but) we're talking about a research-and-development program, so you never know how it's going to come out."
The X-Prize is not intended to provoke a one-shot stunt -- or two, in this case, its sponsors said. Although competition rules stipulate the $10 million prize, along with a sizeable trophy, will be awarded to the first team that flies a spacecraft twice within two weeks to suborbital space, the ultimate goal of the prize and the foundation's reason for being is to shift the way people think about space.
"We're about fulfilling dreams of a generation that grew up with Apollo, where people thought, 'Maybe one day I can fly in space.' Well, 'one day' is coming up pretty quick," Diamandis told United Press International.
Scaled Composites, based at the Mojave Airport in Mojave, Calif., is the most visible of the U.S. contenders for the prize, having test-flown its White Knight turbojet launcher and SpaceShipOne rocketship and making history by winning FAA approval to launch and land on U.S. territory.
Chuck Kline, with the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, said his department has two other license applications in the works.
In all, 27 teams from seven countries have registered as X-Prize contestants. Diamandis said at least a dozen are building what he calls "serious" hardware, with about half that number possessing full-scale engines and the ability to take their creations through to fruition.
The contenders include The da Vinci Project of Canada, which is partnered with Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc., in a launcher-rocketship system that includes a high-altitude balloon and a kerosene- and liquid-oxygen-fueled spacecraft called Wild Fire. The company, which will fly from Kindersley Airport in Saskatchewan, is expected to announce a launch date this month.
No matter who wins the X-Prize -- and Diamandis cautioned that anything is possible -- the foundation wants to keep the budding suborbital rocket industry in the public limelight. Enter the X-Prize Cup, an annual competition to be staged in Florida or New Mexico -- a locale is expected to be announced within a month or so -- that Diamandis envisions as the "Daytona 500" of space. Contestants will compete in several categories, including number of flights within a set period of time, highest altitude reached, number of people flown and quickest turnaround between flights.
"We want to make sure that we don't end up with a scenario where we have one winner (of the X-Prize) that ends up being the only game in town," Diamandis said. "By holding an annual event at the same time, same location, we will bring together all of the teams so that people can bring their families, watch the flights, meet the teams and be inspired by what they see."
The idea of a cash prize for ground-breaking flight harkens back to the earliest days of aviation, the most famous of which was the historic transatlantic journey of Charles Lindbergh. The young pilot, who upstaged the well-funded and highly regarded explorer Richard Byrd, among others, won the $25,000 Raymond Orteig Prize for flying solo from New York to Paris in 1927.
Scaled Composites already has a claim to fame: Rutan and his brother Dick designed the super-lightweight aircraft Voyager, which in 1986 completed the first non-stop, non-refueled, around-the-world flight. With backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Rutan now has set his sights on space.
--
Irene Mona Klotz covers space and aviation for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
