A UPI series exploring the people, passions and business of suborbital manned spaceflight.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 14 (UPI) -- There is a joke making the rounds at commercial space venues that the quickest way to become a millionaire in space is to start out as a billionaire. Despite the long odds of success, a few of America's well-heeled have decided to give it a go.
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen -- number five on Forbes magazine's "Richest People in the World" list -- is backing a project by maverick aircraft designer Burt Rutan. SpaceShipOne, created by Rutan's firm, Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., is the leading contender in a race to send a privately developed, three-person craft to sub-orbital space then repeat the flight in the same vehicle within two weeks.
After three high-altitude, supersonic flights, SpaceShipOne is scheduled for a sub-orbital test-run next week. If successful, the flight will become the first time a private company launches a person into space.
Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Internet mega-bookstore Amazon.com, is investing part of his $5.1-billion fortune in a company called Blue Origin of Seattle, Wash. Bezos is skipping the space race, known as the Ansari X Prize, and its $10 million kitty. The company reportedly is gathering a team for research and development of a low-cost, passenger-carrying sub-orbital launch system, with the eventual goal of building vehicles and technologies that will "enable an enduring human presence in space," according to the company's Web site.
Elon Musk, a fellow Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the electronic payment system PayPal Inc. -- later sold to eBay for $1.5 billion -- is taking a different tack into space. Musk's firm, Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX of El Segundo, Calif., is developing a family of low-cost boosters to transport cargo -- and eventually people -- into orbit. The debut launch of Falcon One is scheduled for late September.
So few companies have been able to carve an alternative path into space -- which has been dominated by government bureaucracies and aerospace industry behemoths since Sputnik opened the space frontier in October 1957 -- that perhaps it is the creator of apocalyptic video games Doom and Quake that has the best mindset to proceed.
"Odds are, we're all going to fail," gaming god John Carmack, founder of cheeky Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas, told United Press International.
Widely considered a top rival to Rutan for the X Prize crown, Carmack's path to space has been slowed by federal regulations and labyrinths so complex they would make Kafka smile.
For example, Carmack's spacecraft, the Black Armadillo, fires its engine all the way to space and all the way back down again. Rutan's SpaceShipOne, on the other hand, powers up after its release from a jet carrier at 50,000 feet and then glides to a runway finish. Current rules limit the duration of sub-orbital spacecraft engine test burns to 15 seconds, which is not enough time for Black Armadillo.
Although the company has been working steadily on its engine program, the latest tests had to be conducted with the vehicle tethered to a crane to comply with the 15-second engine burn limit. The company has applied for a waiver, which is under review. The government, meanwhile, recently completed step one: working out what department will be responsible for overseeing piloted spaceflight.
"There is still significant risk that the entire industry could be killed by regulations," Carmack said. "As I've learned, it's just really obvious that there is no fundamental technical block to building launch systems. The idea of it is out of all proportion to its true difficulty," he continued. "The reason why its turned out to be so expensive and complex is an unfortunate part of its history -- it all came from national (security) imperatives where cost was not a factor and you could waste everything but time."
Though SpaceShipOne shows plenty of engineering savvy, Rutan's greatest advantage in the X Prize competition may be the fact that his company already held a license to fly experimental aircraft. Already an established aviation designer, Rutan started his space venture with development and test-flights of the White Knight carrier aircraft, a high-performance jet designed with the same handling characteristics as its space-hopping offspring.
"Burt got by because he's an airplane (designer)," Carmack said. "For us, as a vertical takeoff (configuration), we have to operate on the federal ranges and it takes 18 months to get permission to fly."
Then there are the costs: $8,000 for Armadillo's fuel per flight and $200,000 in range user fees.
Carmack is holding out hope for a full-scale test firing of Black Armadillo before the end of the year. He is not particularly bothered by the prospect of losing the X Prize competition. As soon as the event is over, he figures Armadillo will return to a more incremental approach to spaceship development -- concentrating, for example, on building a machine that can carry one person into space, rather than three.
"The X Prize hadn't actually been funded until about a year and half ago," Carmack said. "We had our own plan of development and that just caused us to skip a generation of vehicles."
Whether Rutan or one of the other two dozen other contenders wins the X Prize, the competition is set to expire on Jan. 1, 2005. Carmack said he has no plans to stop working.
"We may not get our launch license in time, but our cost to fly will be an order of magnitude less expensive than Burt's vehicle -- $8,000 instead of $80,000," said Carmack.
"Frankly, I don't think anyone is going to win the X prize," said contender Randa Milliron, co-founder and chief executive officer of Interorbital Systems, which operates alongside Scaled Composites at the Mojave Airport Civilian Flight Test Center.
"I think Burt will be able to hit the mark with one pilot (and) maybe reach 50 miles or so, but I don't think he'll be able to do it with three," she said.
The X Prize rules stipulate the vehicle must reach an altitude of 62 miles or 100 kilometers with three people (or one person and weight equivalent to two others) aboard.
"It's a shame that prize is going away," Milliron said. "We think that that's unsportsmanlike. I'd like to see more prizes for this."
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Irene Klotz covers space and aviation for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
