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Private Astronaut Reaches Space ; SpaceShipOne's Successful Mission Had Its Tense Moments

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

MOJAVE DESERT -- A veteran civilian test pilot on Monday became the first human to reach space in a privately developed mission, guiding a tiny rocketship more than 60 miles above California in a flight that flirted with disaster.

In front of thousands of spectators and a teeming press corps, the squid-shaped craft, SpaceShipOne, was lifted into the atmosphere shortly after 6:30 a.m., attached to the belly of a sleek plane called the White Knight.

When the plane reached an altitude of 50,000 feet, it dropped the smaller craft, and its pilot, Michael W. Melvill, started the rocket that took him up nearly

300,000 feet more, to the beginnings of space. He then brought SpaceShipOne back to Earth as a glider, touching down at 8:15.

When Melvill, 63, emerged, he climbed atop the spaceship, spread his arms and gave a primal holler: "Yeeeeeeee-haaah!"

Both craft were designed by Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites, with the help of the Microsoft billionaire Paul G. Allen, who said he had put more than $20 million into the project.

"The flight today opens a new chapter in history, making space access within the reach of ordinary citizens," said Patti Grace Smith, the associate administrator for commercial space transportation for the Federal Aviation Administration. Smith presented Melvill with astronaut wings after the flight.

Melvill earned those wings with some tense moments. During the rocket-fired ascent, he and Rutan recounted in a news conference, SpaceShipOne suddenly rolled 90 degrees to the left. Melvill quickly made a correction, rolling the plane 90 degrees to the right, but then found that his trim controls, which are supposed to help control lift and drag, had a malfunctioning motor. He switched quickly to backup controls, stabilized the errant trim system and left it alone until he reached the ground again.

"I was afraid to touch it," Melvill said.

The trim problem left the plane some 20 miles off course and changed the

angle of flight so that it reached only

328,491 feet -- just 400 feet beyond the hoped-for 100-kilometer altitude. The team had been aiming for 360,000 feet.

Rutan called the malfunction "the most serious safety problem we have encountered" in the nine years it took to create and launch SpaceShipOne. He added, however, that the backup systems and Melvill's training all came together for a successful flight.

Melvill also said that during ascent, he had heard a loud bang, which was apparently caused by a cover over the tail nozzle that buckled during the flight.

"I was pretty scared," he said. But Rutan said later that the problem had had little, if any, effect on the flight. It was the first time the plane had flown with that particular nozzle, which was larger than the ones used previously.

Until Monday, the only travelers to reach the imaginary line between Earth's atmosphere and suborbital space have been aboard ships paid for and controlled by governments. The flight on Monday is a major step along the way for the Rutan team to being able to claim the Ansari X Prize, an international competition to launch people into space without government assistance.

The competition, which began in 1996, has attracted more than two dozen teams from around the world. It requires contestants to fly three people to an altitude of 100 kilometers and then to repeat the flight with the same craft within two weeks.

on the competitions that spurred early

developments in aviation, including the $25,000 Orteig Prize that Charles Lindbergh won in 1927 with his trans-Atlantic solo flight from New York to Paris.

Rutan had invited the public to see the event, and people came by the thousands. A makeshift trailer park held an all-night party, and cars were streaming toward Mojave Airport at 4 a.m.

Even Rutan's competitors cheered him on. Geoff Sheerin, whose Canadian Arrow team has a spaceship with a sleek, Buck-Rogers-with- a-maple-leaf design, said all sides want to see a team begin the age of private sector human space flight. "This is a fantastic day for this industry," Sheerin said Monday.

Congratulations also came from higher above the Earth.

"We're all in the space business together," said Lt. Col. Edward Mike Fincke, on board the International Space Station.

If Rutan's team wins the prize, this project will eclipse his most famous previous achievement in airplane design, the Voyager, which in 1986 flew around the world without refueling.

Still, the flight on Monday is a long way from the heights that NASA astronauts and cosmonauts reach on a regular basis; suborbital space was a brief stepping stone 40 years ago on the way to orbit and the moon. The International Space Station hovers some 240 miles above the Earth, and maintaining that orbit requires speeds of 25 times the speed of sound.

Re-entering the atmosphere at such speeds causes the punishing conditions that can make the return to Earth a risky business; it was a hole in the protective heat shielding of the leading edge of Columbia that caused the superheated gases of reentry to ravage the shuttle's wing and cause the shuttle to break apart 16 minutes before its scheduled landing, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

But to Rutan, the idea that private enterprises might someday send private citizens into space is compelling -- and even more so since NASA has grown so expensive and bureaucratic that he says it cannot be counted on to do the job.

At a news briefing here on Sunday, he said, "Thirty years ago if you had asked NASA -- and people did in those days -- 'How long would it be before I could buy tickets to space?' the answer was, About 30 years.' If you ask today, you'll get about the same answer, 30 years. I think that's unfortunate," he said. "There has been no progress at all made toward affordable space travel."

That sentiment was popular in the crowd. One of the spectators handed Rutan a sign that read:

SpaceShipOne

GovernmentZero

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