|
Commercial space travel next leap for mankind?
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-21 08:47 Private manned flight test may launch new era in
aviation
That last site may join the list of famed locations in aviation history when
a small craft lifts off from its remote California desert airstrip Monday.
SpaceShipOne
rockets toward space in a previous test flight. The craft's designer aims
to open up a new space frontier with Monday's
launch. | SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan of
Scaled Composites, will be carried by a turbojet called White Knight to an
altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters).
If all goes according to plan, it will ignite its rocket engines that propel
the craft to Mach 3, three times the speed of sound, and into space. The
spacecraft will spend three minutes beyond Earth's atmosphere, becoming the
first private craft to carry a human into space and touch down on the same
runway it left about an hour and a half earlier. This mission will mark its 15th
test flight.
But will it mark the next revolution in flight or just another firework in
hopes of bringing the public into space?
If the tiny desert workshop of Scaled Composites has its way, SpaceShipOne's
flight above the Earth -- 62 miles (100 kilometers) above -- will be the gateway
to many more. And the next one could carry paying passengers.
"Our hope is that this will be a benchmark ... for a lot more people to not
only have fun but to reap the benefits that we believe might be there," said
Rutan, the aerospace engineer spearheading the project.
"Just like when early airplanes were flying in 1910, we didn't know what the
benefits are, but we were doing it because it was fun."
The team of aerospace enthusiasts believes this flight will unlock the
potential languishing since the 1960s when jets and space technology made their
most spectacular breakthroughs. Although impressive technical advances have been
made since then, few innovations proved as revolutionary as the Apollo lunar
program or the SR-71 reconnaissance plane, Rutan said.
"The reason we haven't had the advances is no one had the courage to demand
it," he said.
So now that private manned spaceflight is almost a reality, are rocket
launches for the rest of us around the corner?
Well, not quite.
That kind of progress will take more, said Roger Launius, a space historian
at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
"I wish them well. I hope it opens up this capability to the public," Launius
said. "I wish it were more revolutionary."
The SpaceShipOne flight would be no doubt history making. But three factors
that proved instrumental in making aviation part of our daily lives will play a
similar role in space travel: government subsidies, a commercial sponsor and
public enthusiasm.
The phenomenal level of investment, research and physical and financial
daring that air travel enjoyed during the 20th century may also be required for
spaceflight. And achieving orbital flight -- the holy grail of private space
travel -- is more difficult.
But this flight is only a steppingstone.
"Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program
and do it at an extremely low cost," Rutan said.
Business from biplanes
Creating a market for commercial air travel from aviation's barnstorming
roots took more than better planes and adventurous investors. It took a lot of
public funds and imagination.
U.S. commercial aviation, although a thriving industry for decades, received
strong government subsidies up until the 1960s. That promises to play a major
role, at least initially, in fueling private human spaceflight in the future. An
industrial incubator was also critical to the growth of aviation in the United
States. The U.S. Postal Service had filled that role by 1911, and other
commercial ventures followed.
And, of course, air flight had to ignite the public imagination before it
began transporting large numbers of people economically. Decades of
barnstorming, air shows and finally Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight
from New York to Paris aboard the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 made that
possible.
Today, aviation historians aren't arguing if private human spaceflight will
happen -- a successful launch Monday by SpaceShipOne should put the question to
rest. But whether a constellation of factors to make human spaceflight routine
will come together as they did for aviation seems less certain.
Getting off the ground
SpaceShipOne makes an April powered test flight from Edwards Air Force Base
in California.
By any measure, aviation developed at an astonishing rate. In
1903, two bicycle repairmen sent a cloth-clad biplane aloft in Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, and sparked a revolution. A mere 23 years after the Wright Brothers,
the first commercial airline, Western Air Express, took off, and the major air
routes and airlines were in place by 1930.
In contrast, spaceflight remains largely a government endeavor today. Despite
more than $1 trillion invested worldwide in the last 40 years by some estimates,
an independent space industry has not materialized.
But the potential for private space growth is there.
The U.S. Commerce Department's Office of Space Commercialization put the 2002
global revenues for commercial space transportation and satellite technology at
$105 billion -- and growing.
That figure does not even include human flight that Rutan and others are
advocating.
A paper by Patrick Collins, an economics professor at Azabu University in
Japan and founder of www.spacefuture.com, predicted that once suitable passenger
vehicles are available, private industry could begin building the massive
tourist industry.
He presented a "feasible" space tourism scenario by 2030 that would put 5
million passengers into space per year, with an orbital population of 70,000
people involving as many as 60 co-orbital hotels. He said thinking of space in
those terms amounts to revolution comparable to Copernicus's proof of a solar
system that orbited the sun.
That view might seem overly optimistic, but Collins disagrees.
"I don't think it's unreasonable in view of the space industry's
extraordinary economic stagnation for half a century," he wrote. "The full
implications of breaking out of that are going to be a revelation."
Eyes on the X Prize
Inspired by the Orteig Prize -- a $25,000 award that went to Lindbergh for
the first nonstop aircraft flight between New York and Paris -- the $10 million
Ansari X Prize will reward the first one to achieve civilian spaceflight.
Workers prepare the spaceship for its historic flight. The large rocket
motor will produce 17,000 pounds of thrust.
SpaceShipOne will have to beat
out more than 20 teams from seven countries -- some of which claim they are less
than two months away from launching -- to win the X Prize.
The money goes to the first team that privately finances, builds and launches
a spaceship carrying three people -- or a pilot and the weight equivalent of two
passengers -- into suborbital space 62.5 miles (100.6 kilometers) above Earth.
The vehicle must return safely and repeat the launch within two weeks.
Rutan's flight Monday will have only one person on board despite having room
for two passengers. (The pilot's name has not been announced yet.) SpaceShipOne
will compete for the X Prize later in the year. The winner will presumably spark
an explosion of investment in private space travel, advocates hope.
And who will be one of the first private astronauts on SpaceShipOne?
Rutan said he is in the running.
"I'll certainly be one of the first passengers, let's put it that way," he
said.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top Life
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
