Private Spacecraft to Make Second Flight for $10 Million Prize on Monday
Posted on: Friday, 1 October 2004, 06:00 CDT
Oct. 1--MOJAVE, Calif. -- The SpaceShipOne team will attempt to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize on Monday, the 47th anniversary of the start of the first space race when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite.
Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the partnership between billionaire Paul Allen and Mojave's Burt Rutan, announced it plans to fly SpaceShipOne at dawn Monday to claim the prize.
SpaceShipOne successfully completed its first Ansari X Prize flight on Wednesday, climbing 63 miles above Earth.
Monday's flight out of Mojave Airport will be open to spectators, like Wednesday's flight. Cars will be admitted beginning at 3 a.m. for $20 each. Motor homes can spend the night before for $50.
The prize rules require the winning spacecraft to be privately financed and privately built, to make at least two flights above 100 kilometers -- 62 miles -- within two weeks, and to do it carrying a pilot and two passengers or a weight equivalent to two passengers.
If the SpaceShipOne team is unsuccessful on Monday, it does have another rocket engine ready for another attempt. The SpaceShipOne team has until the morning of Oct. 13 to make the second flight above 100 kilometers.
Monday will be the anniversary of the 1957 launch of Sputnik, a satellite about the size of basketball, launched by the Soviet Union. The Sputnik launch caught the world off-guard and ushered in the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
X Prize Foundation leaders hope the $10 million payout will also usher in a new age in space travel, this time led by the private sector. The ultimate payoff for this competition, space advocates hope, is affordable space travel for the average person.
The nearest competitor for the prize, a Canadian project with the ungainly title of the GoldenPalace.Com space program powered by the da Vinci Project, had planned to make its first attempt on Oct. 2. That team, however, announced last week that it had to postpone the flight, and no new date has been announced.
The Canadian team's spacecraft is called Wild Fire -- a rocket that will be carried aloft above Saskatchewan by a helium balloon, then ignited to zoom into space.
On June 21, SpaceShipOne became the first private manned craft to reach space, flying to just above 100 kilometers. For the feat, SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill was awarded astronaut wings by the Federal Aviation Administration.
On Oct. 3, the Discovery Channel will air "Black Sky: The Race for Space," a documentary detailing the development of SpaceShipOne and the June flight. A revised version of the show with highlights from the two Ansari X Prize flights will air later this month.
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