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Get Four
|  | DECEMBER 22, 2003
By Otis Port Free Enterprise on the Final Frontier Space buffs are cheering the first flight of a privately developed "space plane" they hope will launch the age of orbital tourism A chill dawn wind couldn't cool the hopes of the crowd gathered on Dec. 17, in part to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight. But this wasn't Kitty Hawk, N.C. -- and the audience was a mere 50 people, not the thousands who flocked to see what turned out to be an ill-fated reenactment of the birth of modern aviation. The setting was Mojave, Calif., on a high desert plateau some 90 miles north of Los Angeles. And what happened there could be a milestone as significant as the Wrights' achievement a century ago: The launch of a new Space Age -- one that could culminate in space travel becoming as routine as air travel is today (see BW Online, 11/19/03, "Calling All Space Cadets"). "GO! GO!" Around 8 a.m., a curious mother-daughter aircraft took to the sky. Beneath the mother ship, dubbed White Knight, was a small, dart-shaped space plane called SpaceShipOne. After being dropped by White Knight after reaching an altitude of nearly 10 miles, the rocket-powered space plane was designed to scoot at least 50 miles higher -- to the fringe of space. Both were conceived by legendary airplane engineer Burt Rutan and built by his Mojave-based company, Scaled Composites, with funding from Paul Allen, who made billions by co-founding Microsoft (MSFT ) with Bill Gates in 1975, then left in 1983. At 8:15 a.m., Jim Benson had his digital video camera glued to his eye, straining to track White Knight as it approached 48,000 feet. Benson had been invited to witness the maiden powered flight of SpaceShipOne because the company he founded, SpaceDev, in Poway, near San Diego, built the spacecraft's rocket engine. "I could hear the countdown: 'Five, four, three, two, one -- release!' Then nothing, and more nothing," recalls Benson, who fretted: "Why isn't our motor lighting?" Finally, nine seconds after the two planes separated, test pilot Brian Binnie hit the rocket's start button, and SpaceShipOne leapt upward atop a blazing trail of flame. A huge cheer erupted on the ground, Benson says. "It was like a scene in NASA's Houston control center, with people yelling: 'Go! Go!'" ROUGH LANDING. Exiting the atmosphere wasn't on the day's ticket, however. After 15 seconds, Binnie shut down the rocket. He continued coasting up, reaching a peak of 68,000 feet -- or about four miles higher than where SpaceShipOne had been dropped by White Knight. Then the space-flight hopeful glided back to a landing at Mojave airport, where the left landing gear collapsed at touchdown. Damage to the left wing was minor, Rutan later reported, and will be easily repaired. Although SpaceShipOne didn't reach space, the test flight notched a couple of impressive firsts. At the end of the rocket burn, it hit 930 mph. That's almost Mach 1.2, or 1.2 times the speed of sound. It became the first privately developed plane to break the sound barrier. SpaceDev's innovative rocket engine also proved its mettle. It's a hybrid rocket, meaning it burns a mix of solid and liquid fuel. SpaceDev chose that combination because it's inherently safer than the two-liquid combo that NASA uses. The solid component can't oxidize fast enough to explode. "Our rocket is the first hybrid motor [for] human space flight," crows Benson. "And it also was developed with no government financing." "SPACE IS RISKY". The events at Mojave were of historic importance, Benson declares. "It was the dawn of a second Space Age. Space won't be a government monopoly any more. It's going to become exciting again." Like many other space enthusiasts, Benson criticizes NASA for growing too conservative and crotchety. "The priesthood at NASA has created this myth that deaths aren't supposed to happen, that space can be made safe. But space is risky -- any frontier is. Hundreds of people get killed every year climbing mountains and scuba diving," he notes. "If humans are ever to explore other planets, we've got to accept that there will be more accidents and deaths in space." One of Benson's fondest memories was standing near Cape Canaveral and watching the 1972 launch of Apollo 17 -- the last manned mission to the moon. He hopes that SpaceShipOne and his hybrid rocket will help rekindle humanity's dream of venturing to other planets. "If I never do anything else in life, this is almost enough," he says. "But I do want a ride into space, too." SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS. So when will SpaceShipOne make it all the way to space? Sometime soon -- but Rutan won't say exactly what the schedule is. If his baby reaches at least 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) carrying a pilot and two other persons -- or the weight of two people -- and then pulls off a repeat within two weeks, Rutan could win the X Prize (www.xprize.org). It's a $10 million incentive to stimulate the privatization of space and is funded in part by St. Louis executives who are proud of their city's aviation heritage. St. Louis organizations paid for Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. While Rutan is the odds-on favorite to collect the X Prize, 27 other teams from seven countries are also racing to inaugurate what many insist will become a huge business -- space tourism. A Commerce Dept. study estimates that suborbital flights with a ticket price of $10,000 would attract perhaps a million passengers a year. Benson fervently believes that space tourism will begin within the next decade, so he can be among those peeking down at the earth from space. I believe, too.  Port covers science and technology for BusinessWeek in New York Edited by Beth Belton
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