CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 3 (UPI) -- Down the road from SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan's hub at the local airport in Mojave, Calif., reside a handful of other aspiring rocketeers, including XCOR Aerospace, a spunky startup that at one time hired Rutan's brother as a company pilot.
Even before SpaceShipOne blasted into public consciousness with a trio of suborbital spaceflights last year, XCOR had managed an impressive stunt of its own. Four years ago, the company outfitted a Long-EZ airplane -- another Rutan invention -- with a pair of home-built 400-pound-thrust rocket engines.
At the helm of the vessel, which XCOR dubbed the EZ-Rocket, was Burt's brother, Dick Rutan, who gained fame as the chief aviator on the Voyager expedition, which in 1986 completed the first non-stop flight around the world without refueling.
The first runway test of the rocket-powered airplane was a resounding success.
"After I turned on the rocket engine, the engine came smoothly to full thrust and the aircraft rapidly accelerated to flying speed. I rotated and the aircraft lifted off and flew for a few hundred feet under rocket power. I then shut down, landed and rolled to a stop. All the systems operated normally," Dick Rutan said in reports published after the flight.
That was only the beginning. XCOR began a follow-on program to drive down the operational costs of reusable rocket engines, a key component of building a commercially viable passenger spaceship.
Less than 18 months after the EZ-Rocket's first flight, XCOR caught the eye of the U.S. government, which agreed to help fund the firm's work on an innovative rocket engine pump. When that work was completed, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded XCOR a follow-on contract, worth $750,000, to build and test a prototype.
Last October -- the same month Rutan and his financier, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, clinched the $10 million Ansari X Prize for a pair of suborbital spaceflights -- XCOR successfully demonstrated its cryogenic liquid-oxygen pump. What made the device so unusual was unlike most high-performance propulsion systems, both the pump and its motor were piston machines, rather than more traditional turbo-centrifugal systems.
At the time, XCOR already had announced plans to build a two-person suborbital spaceship it called the Xerus. The firm, however, never entered the X Prize Foundation's commercial spaceflight competition, in part because contest rules prohibited government funding in any part of the vehicles' design or construction.
XCOR President Jeff Greason said his whole approach to developing the technology for Xerus was to offset private development costs with government contracts for related technology development.
"We're not just building a company," Greason told UPI's Space Race 2. "We're building an industry."
Last month the company's approach paid off big time. XCOR won a $7 million award from NASA to develop another critical piece of Xerus technology -- a cryogenic fuel tank.
"This is a wonderful opportunity for NASA and for XCOR," Greason said in a statement. "Both private industry and the government will benefit from this project, as well as future users of space vehicles."
Fuel tanks for cryogenic propellants always have been of interest to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but the technology took on heightened importance after the space shuttle Columbia accident in February 2003, which was triggered by fuel-tank failure. A piece of foam insulation fell off Columbia's huge external tank and hit the ship's left wing during launch. The damage caused the shuttle to break up 16 days later when it re-entered the atmosphere for landing. Seven astronauts died in the accident.
Engineers coat the tank with foam to help keep the shuttle's liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen propellants at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero, despite the heat and humidity at the Florida launch site. The insulation also is intended to help prevent ice from forming on the outside of the tank. The ice, like the foam, is another potential source of debris that could fall off during launch and damage the shuttle.
XCOR's contract is to develop a composite cryogenic liquid-oxygen tank for NASA's Exploration Systems Research and Technology program, which is focused on developing key technologies for future human missions to the moon and Mars.
The company plans to develop a liquid-oxygen tank that is significantly lighter than current systems, because the tank will serve a dual role as an insulated fuel container and part of the vehicle's structure.
XCOR said materials used in the new tank retain their flexibility and toughness at cryogenic temperatures and are inherently non-flammable -- an important safety feature for liquid-oxygen tanks on human spaceflight vehicles.
At last week's Space Access Society conference in Phoenix, Greason said he is more optimistic than ever that commercial suborbital spaceflight will become a viable business.
"We had no idea how hard it would be when we got started," Greason said, and added business prospects look bright.
NASA also is looking at private enterprise for help with another potential problem: a crush of visitors to the agency's Web site during its first two shuttle missions following the Columbia accident. Discovery is scheduled to lift off in July on the first post-Columbia flight.
The space agency said last month it is accepting proposals from private entities for bandwidth to support an expected surge in demand for streaming video during the launches and mission operations.
NASA will not pay for the service, but is offering to display sponsor logos and give credit on the NASA Web portal. The agency said it expects 20 million to 30 million visits to its Web site, with 250,000 to 500,000 Internet users also accessing NASA TV coverage via streaming video.
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Space Race 2 is a weekly series by UPI exploring the people, passions and business of commercial manned spaceflight, by long-time aerospace journalist Irene Klotz. E-mail: [email protected]
