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Plane Soars Out of Earth's Atmosphere

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

MOJAVE, Calif. - The chubby-looking, stubby-winged aircraft that cracked the commercial space flight barrier this week may have made a great leap forward in aviation history, but the man who designed it believes we are still a long way from regular space tourism.

SpaceShipOne, designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, soared to 328,491 feet above Earth on Monday, just a little more than 400 feet above the distance scientists widely consider to be the boundary of space. The flight lasted 90 minutes.

Pilot Mike Melvill, who has set world records for altitude and speed and logged more than 6,400 hours of flight time in fixed-wing aircraft and seven helicopters, said the experience "blew me away."

"It was really an awesome sight," he said of gazing down at the Earth's curvature from 62 miles above, of seeing the planet in all its various colors and gazing at the California coastline from Los Angeles to San Diego.

"It was like nothing I'd ever seen before," he said.

"You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God when you do something like this," the 63-year-old pilot added.

His flight led to immediate speculation that the well-heeled would pay plenty for the experience. But Rutan said he has doubts space tourism will be feasible anytime soon.

SpaceShipOne was designed by one of two dozen teams trying to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which will go to the first that can launch a three-seat spacecraft to an altitude of 62 miles twice in 14 days. SpaceShipOne's effort is bankrolled by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who is spending more than $20 million.

The three-seat requirement demonstrates the capacity for paying customers; the quick turnaround between flights demonstrates reusability and reliability.

But for a commercial venture to be successful, Rutan said he believes a spacecraft would need at least six seats.

"It makes an enormous difference to fly six or 10 people," he said. "Because whether you're flying six or 10 people, you're flying the same avionics, you're flying one pilot, you're flying the same checkout, preflight and post-flight, and those are the expensive things."

Bill Sprague, the team leader of American Astronautics Corp., agreed. His team is building a seven-person spacecraft for the X Prize competition that it hopes to flight test by the end of September.

"Our intention is to enter the market as a commercial space enterprise. We're out to win an industry, not a prize," he said.

Although Monday's flight appeared to go flawlessly, Rutan revealed afterward that there was a serious malfunction when SpaceShipOne's trim system failed, causing it to miss its atmospheric re-entry point by 22 miles. There was also a large bang during the flight, but SpaceShipOne's team did not know what caused that.

Hitting the target is important because once the plane re-enters the atmosphere, it becomes a glider and cannot simply fly to its destination. But Melvill said he had enough leeway built into the flight that he was able to return to Mojave Airport.

Although Rutan said the malfunction posed "no big deal" to the flight's safety, he said the system would have to be fixed before the plane could fly again.

"There is no way we would fly again without knowing the cause and without assuring that we have totally fixed it because it's a very critical system," he said.

To attract future tourists for suborbital flights - those that don't circle the Earth but simply go up and come back down - Rutan said spacecraft must be outfitted with large windows for convenient viewing. They must also travel a good deal higher than 62 miles, he said, so tourists have enough time in space to unstrap their harnesses, float around in zero gravity and check out the view.

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