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UPDATE
Day dawns for X Prize space shot
11:21 29 September 04
NewScientist.com news service
A pioneering aviation company will attempt to rocket into space on Wednesday in a bid to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
The prize will go to the first non-governmental vehicle that can ferry three people to a height of 100 kilometres twice within two weeks. Successful in the second flight, currently scheduled for 4 October, would clinch the prize for the Scaled Composites team, based in Mojave, California.
Thousands of spectators are expected to descend on the airport of the small desert town of Mojave, where the flight is scheduled for takeoff at 0647 PDT (1447 BST). A jet plane called White Knight will carry rocket SpaceShipOne slung beneath it to a height of 14,330 metres (47,000 feet).
At about 0750 PDT (1550 BST), the jet will release SpaceShipOne. The rocket will fire its engine for about 90 seconds to shoot above 100 kilometres - the official start of space. Its crew will experience about three minutes of weightlessness and be able to see the curvature of the Earth before descending for about 20 minutes and gliding to a landing around 0830 PDT (1630 BST).
X Prize director Peter Diamandis set up the prize in 1996 in order to spur commercial spaceflight. He was inspired by the $25,000 Orteig Prize set up in 1919 that led to Charles Lindbergh's famed trans-Atlantic flight of 1927.
"Dream is alive"
Now, that vision is turning into a reality. On Monday, airline mogul Richard Branson announced he was licensing SpaceShipOne's technology and that a new company, Virgin Galactic, could begin tourist flights to space in 2007 for about $190,000 per ticket.
That momentum - and a sense of giddy camaraderie - could be felt at Mojave's airport on the eve of the flight. "The dream is alive," said a grinning airport employee.
Dan DeLong, chief engineer for XCOR Aerospace, a Mojave-based company not vying for the X Prize, says Scaled Composites is showing the general public that space tourism is not a flight of fancy.
"It's helping to kill the giggle factor," DeLong said, referring to people's reactions when he tells them he hopes to build a two-person rocket-powered plane to take people into space.
First civilian astronaut
By Tuesday evening, Scaled Composites had still not revealed who would be piloting either White Knight or SpaceShipOne. But several knowledgeable sources said veteran pilot Michael Melvill would probably take the helm.
Melvill became the first civilian astronaut when he flew the rocket above 100 km in June. That flight did not qualify for the X Prize, however, because it did not include two additional people, or their weight equivalent, as winning flights must.
Scaled Composite's team is led by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, who designed the first airplane to fly non-stop around the world without refuelling in 1986. Funding, estimated at $20 million, is provided by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
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It's a vision thing.
The kind of vision that is born by raising one's head skyward is a sort of birthright in us. The dream of flight is not bound by our atmosphere. Space is immediately accessible to our vision. We see it always there - above us. Brave attempts like this one never fail to inspire. Best of luck to this group of space pioneers!
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