Paul Allen-backed rocket climbs to edge of space

By Peter Pae
Los Angeles Times

AP Paul Allen, center, co-founder of Microsoft, shakes hands with test pilot Brian Binnie last year. Burt Rutan stands behind his design, SpaceShipOne, which reached the edge of space yesterday.

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The SpaceShipOne rocket — funded to a large degree by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — carried 62-year-old test pilot Mike Melvill to heights only a few NASA astronauts and Air Force pilots have reached.

The aviation milestone also propelled the aircraft's designer, Burt Rutan, to the forefront in the race to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, an unusual competition to spur development of commercial space flight.

"You just can't imagine what a thrill it was. I had tears in my eyes," Rutan said as the winged rocket glided back to Earth and made a picture-perfect landing at the airport. "It creates a path for the rest of us to go into space."

Rutan's team members called the trip the first private manned space flight, although the definition of where space begins varies considerably.

Rutan, a legend in the aerospace industry, has built some of the most pioneering aircraft in history including Voyager, which made the first nonstop, nonrefueled flight around the world in 1986.

So far, flying into space has been limited to astronauts and military pilots on space vehicles designed and funded by the U.S., Russian or Chinese governments. Only two private individuals have reached space — California businessman Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth, both of whom paid $20 million to ride in a Russian-built Soyuz.

Rutan and others vying for the X Prize are hoping to open the way for commercial space flights in which the public could pay a round-trip space fare of about $100,000 by 2020. It's not cheap, but still far less than the nearly $60 million it costs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to sent a single astronaut into space.

Rutan said the price could drop even lower — to about the same as a "two-week luxury cruise," adding that a passenger would spend about four minutes in space. The entire trip, from takeoff to gliding back to Earth, would last about 1½ hours.

"This is proof that a small group with a small budget can do what the government took decades and billions of dollars to do," said Peter Diamandis, creator of the X Prize.

Rutan, whose 130-employee company Scaled Composites built the rocket and the mother plane, declined to say how much he has spent developing the vehicles. But some analysts estimate it is no more than $25 million.
 
Scaled Composites, based at Mojave Airport, is one of two dozen teams from seven countries vying for the X Prize, which calls for launching a three-passenger craft to 328,000 feet twice within two weeks. The altitude generally is considered the boundary where space begins, although the Air Force gives pilots astronaut wings if they go above 50 miles, or 264,000 feet.

The first team to complete the task by the end of this year wins $10 million, a purse set by the X Foundation, the St. Louis-based sponsor of the competition. The foundation's donors include Tito, author Tom Clancy, Erik Lindberg, the grandson of famed aviator Charles Lindberg, and John McDonnell, whose father formed the namesake aerospace company that eventually merged with Boeing.

Diamandis said the foundation was created to push development of private reusable manned launch vehicles. One key restriction is that the rocket must be built and operated without any government funds or involvement.

Only about one-third of the teams have a legitimate chance of developing a reusable space vehicle, and the designs vary widely, Diamandis said. One team envisions launching a high-altitude balloon, from which a rocket will be launched. Another has reproduced the German V-2 rocket that terrorized England during World War II.

With yesterday's flight of SpaceShipOne, no other team has progressed as far as Rutan's. Rutan said he hopes to go after the prize this summer.

"With today's flight, much of the major technical challenges have been overcome," he said. "It's just a matter of going higher with more people."