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Paul Allen's rocket set to launch June 21

By Andrew Garber
Seattle Times staff reporter

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If successful, it would be the first private spaceship to leave the earth's atmosphere.

"This is something that has not been attempted before," said Michael Nank, a spokesman for Allen's investment company, Vulcan. "It's really significant. It shows that, with relatively low cost, we can spur commercial space technology. It's always previously been done by governmental agencies."

Nank would not disclose how much has been spent to date, but previous estimates put the cost into the tens of millions of dollars.

The rocket, called SpaceShipOne, was designed and built by Scaled Composites, a Mojave company founded by Burt Rutan.

Rutan, the team leader for the project, became famous for building a privately funded airplane that in 1986 made the first flight around the world without refueling.

His plan for manned space flight is similar to the X-15 program in the 1960s, in which an X-15 was carried aloft by a B-52 and dropped. The craft was boosted to high altitude by a rocket engine.

Rutan will have a twin-turbojet aircraft carry SpaceShipOne, a three-seat rocket ship. At about 50,000 feet, the spaceship will be dropped from the carrier jet.

The rocket motor is expected to fire for about 80 seconds, pushing the craft to Mach 3 in a vertical climb. If everything goes as planned, the spaceship will then coast to an altitude of 62 miles before falling back to Earth. The company says the pilot will be weightless for more than three minutes and see the blackness of space. The craft does not go fast enough to put it into orbit.

The craft's twin tails would be folded up for a shuttlecock effect as it re-enters the atmosphere. The pilot later reconfigures the ship back to a normal glider and lands it like an airplane on the same runway from which it took off.

SpaceShipOne later is to contend for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, a competition to launch three people into suborbital space, bring them back safely and do it again within two weeks using the same vehicle. Several private groups are in contention for the prize.

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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