Category Space Ship One

During the test flight, the TONU displayed a readout from the energy altitude predictor during the boost phase. Developed by aerodynamicist Jim Tighe, it worked by making calculations based on factors like SpaceShipOne"s speed and thrust. The pilot used this to decide when to turn off the rocket engine because SpaceShipOne was roughly half the distance to apogee after rocket-engine shutdown. For the second half, it coasted the rest of the way up.

The pilot needed a way to ensure he didn’t run the rocket engine too long or too short. The initial powered flights relied on a timer, but using the energy altitude predictor yielded much better results. By looking at the readout of the energy altitude predictor, the pilot had a very good idea of the altitude SpaceShipOne would reach if the rocket engine shut down at that exact moment.

For example, the energy altitude predictor may have read 200,000 feet (60,960 meters), but in actuality, SpaceShipOne may have only been at an altitude of 80,000 feet (24,380 meters). So, if

SpaceShipOne shut down the rocket engine at that precise moment, it would coast to an apogee of about 200,000 feet (60,960 meters). This would be 128,000 feet (39,010 meters) short of the Ansari X Prize requirement. Therefore, the pilot wouldn’t have shut down the rock­et engine at this point, but he would have waited until the energy alti­tude predictor read at least 328,000 feet (100,000 meters).

Nearly one full year since flight testing began, SpaceShipOne was on the verge of making a spaceflight. One critical piece of infor­mation was missing, though. “The object of that flight was to do a supersonic feathered reentry,” Mike Melvill said. “We needed that data before we could go beyond that.” Figure 8.7 shows SpaceShipOne mated up to White Knight in preparation for the third powered flight.

Ten seconds after releasing from White Knight at 46,000 feet (14,020 meters), Melvill lit off the rocket engine. Figure 8.8 shows a dramatic rearward view of the rocket engine’s fiery plume and exhaust.

“During the boost after he reached the vertical part of the trajec­tory, the avionics display started flickering and then went blank,” Doug Shane said. “We all had good displays in the ground station. And Mike said, T looked out the window, and we were going pretty much straight up. So, I stayed with her.’ Gotta love a guy like Mike. Of course it came back on as soon as the motor shut down.”

The rocket engine burn duration was set by a timer. As Melvill looked out the windows to navigate, SpaceShipOne boosted to 150,000 feet (45,720 meters) and Mach 2.5, and then its rocket engine shut down. SpaceShipOne

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Flight Test Log Excerpt for 14P

Date: 13 May 2004

Flight Number Pilot/Flight Engineer

SpaceShipOne 14P Mike Melvill

White Knight 56L Brian Binnie/Matt Stinemetze

Objective: The third powered flight of SpaceShipOne. 55 seconds motor burn time. Handling qualities during boost and performance verification. Reaction control system use for reorientation to entry attitude. Supersonic feather stability and control.

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Fig. 8.7. The photograph shows SpaceShipOne being prepared for its third rocket-powered test flight. SpaceShipOne had made its very first test flight just about a year earlier. The main goal of this test flight was to evaluate the performance of the feather at supersonic speed. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore

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Fig. 8.9. SpaceShipOne reached an apogee of 211,400 feet (64,430 meters), and the video camera in the tail boom recorded the feather in the extended position. While high above Los Angeles, SpaceShipOne was technically not in space, even though the curvature of Earth can be clearly seen. However, the curvature is somewhat exaggerated due to the auto focus lens used. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, video capture provided courtesy of Discovery Channel and Vulcan Productions, Inc.

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reentry just as expected. It actually descended more smoothly at supersonic speeds than it did at subsonic speeds. Figure 8.9 shows SpaceShipOne above Earth, with Los Angeles and the California coast­line in the background.

Back on the ground, engineers traced the avionics malfunction to a dimmer, a small electrical component. And since the thermal protection data looked good, Scaled Composites felt that SpaceShipOne performed well enough to continue forward.

Like many people, Peter Diamandis’ fascination with space began back when he was a child. But unlike many people, he has not stood idly by waiting for the stars to come to him. His obsession with the point where gravity loses its touch, and the places beyond, firmly took root while he was an aerospace engineering student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had the chance to meet astronauts-in-training back then, but this forced the realization that his chances of becoming an astronaut himself were remote and that even if he did make it as one, he would fly to space maybe twice in a decade. Figure 2.4 shows Diamandis as SpaceShipOne made its way to space on October 4, 2004.

The government space programs do work well in specific ways, but very few people will ever get the chance to go up. “That wasn’t my vision of spaceflight,” Diamandis said. “I wanted to go as a private pioneer in my own ship whenever I wanted to go.”

Dennis Tito spent $20 million to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz in 2001, becoming the first

B. IL Aerospace Technologies D. ARCA

F. Suborbital Corporation

Fig. 2.3. The competitors pursued many different approaches, although not every one managed to launch hardware. Concepts were either ground-launched or air-launched, and while most were rockets, many were space planes, with the exception of one flying saucer that would ride upon "blastwave" pulsejets. The air – launched vehicles were either carried or towed by an aircraft or lifted by a giant balloon. The methods of reentry were just as varied. X PRIZE Foundation

Fig. 2.5. Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavor are the remaining three operational Space Shuttles. First launched on April 12, 1981, exactly twenty years after Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first-ever spaceflight, the Space Shuttle had been the only U. S. vehicle to carry people into space for twenty-three years prior to the spaceflights of SpaceShipOne. Six Space Shuttles were built, although the first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, never reached space. In 1986, Challenger exploded during liftoff, and in 2003, Columbia broke apart during reentry. Dan Linehan

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Fig. 2.4. Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize Foundation, gives the thumbs up as SpaceShipOne makes its way up to space during the second Ansari X Prize flight.

After reading The Spirit of St Louis by Charles Lindbergh, Diamandis was inspired to create a space prize modeled after the early aviation prizes.

Dan Linehan

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Fig. 2.6. Thousands and thousands of space enthusiasts crowded into the high desert of Southern California to watch the spaceflights of SpaceShipOne as Mojave Airport transformed into a spaceport. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore

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paying space tourist. Diamandis has reported that the cost to fly the Space Shuttle, shown in figure 2.5 preparing to launch to the ISS, has ranged from $500 million to $750 million for just one flight, of which propellants make up only 1 percent of that cost. These figures keep the gate to the space frontier shut pretty tight for most people. There just had to be another way.

While flying together over the Hudson River in 1994, Gregg Maryniak, a longtime friend and business partner, wondered when Diamandis would also get his pilot’s license. Diamandis had already stopped and started several times. This was unusual, considering Diamandis’ deep desire for space. One might expect that for someone with dreams of traveling among the stars, a pilot’s license was a good thing to have. But as history continues to remind us, the shortest distance between point A and point В is not necessarily a straight line. Diamandis was far too consumed with what was well beyond where the air is thin.

“Gregg asked me if I had ever read The Spirit of St. Louis,” Diamandis said. Maryniak had explained that he received the book as a gift, and it helped motivate him to finish his pilot’s license. Shortly after their flight, Maryniak gave a copy of The Spirit of St. Louis to Diamandis. But if anything, the book proved to sidetrack Diamandis, resulting in the unanticipated consequence of drastically changing not only how people reach space but also who gets to go.

“As I read that book, I had no idea that Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic to win a prize and that nine different teams had spent $400,000 to win the $25,000 prize,” Diamandis said. “And by the time I finished reading the book, the whole idea of the X Prize had come to mind.”

What Diamandis realized was that a prize could be the catalyst needed for the development of a new breed of spacecraft that could demonstrate the public’s desire for commercial spaceflight. “We needed a paradigm shift,” Diamandis said. “People had become so stuck in their way of thinking that spaceflight was only for the government—only largest corporations and governments could do this—it could never be done by an individual. This thinking was paralyzing us, and that was what I was trying to change.”

When Lindbergh made his famous crossing, the airplane had been in existence for a little more than two decades. It was still a novelty. Some enterprising individuals foresaw the economic advantages of aviation, while others stoked the fanfare and fervor. As a result, hundreds of aviation competitions were established to see who could fly the farthest, the fastest, the highest. It was as much about pushing the limits as it was about drawing boundaries where none had ever existed.

At a time when aviation was in its infancy, prizes and competi­tions put its growth on afterburners. And during these times, people could look in the mirror and see themselves in the cockpit, goggles drawn and wrapped in a scarf, without having to use too much imagination. Although some of the flyers were wealthy and privi­leged and others had renown and notoriety, Charles Lindbergh, an airmail pilot, and others like him, proved aviation was in reach of the common person.

Diamandis saw this vision, only with rocket ships and space helmets. His passion was contagious. He energized many talented and dedicated people who joined this march toward space, contributing thousands and thousands of volunteer hours along the way. Figure 2.6 shows the crowds who gathered to share in this vision.

In 1919, Raymond Orteig created the Orteig Prize for the first non­stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris or from Paris to New York. Orteig, born in France, owned hotels in New York City. Prizes had been enticing aviators and aircraft makers for a decade now. Newspapers sponsored them because it gave their readers something exciting to read. Businesses sponsored them because they saw financial opportunity.

Aviation technology was not up to the challenge, and Orteig had to extend the deadline of the prize. Come 1926, still no one had claimed the prize. Only one team made an attempt, but they crashed on takeoff.

On May 20, 1927, with only 20 feet (6 meters) to spare, the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis cleared the telephone wires a short distance from the edge of the runway at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. Charles Lindbergh, shown in figure 2.7, had just lifted off for his first solo attempt at crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Several failed attempts had already been made by other competitors by now. Nine teams were in the race to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Four men had died trying, and two others, setting out together right before Lindbergh, were lost over the Atlantic.

To make the journey, Lindbergh would have to strip the plane down to the bare minimum to maximize the amount of fuel he could carry. Table 2.1 shows the specifications of the Spirit of St. Louis. So much of the aircraft was gas tank, by design, that Lindbergh had to use a periscope to see directly ahead of the aircraft because a gas tank in front

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Table 2.1 Spirit of St. Louis Specifications

Ryan Airlines Company highly modified M-2 46 feet (14 meters)

27 feet 8 inches (8 meters)

9 feet 10 inches (3 meters) 2,150 pounds (975 kilograms) 5,135 pounds (2,330 kilograms) Wright Whirlwind J-5C 223 horsepower

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Fig. 2.8. The Spirit of St. Louis was specially designed by Charles Lindbergh to make the transoceanic flight. Much of the aircraft was a fuel tank, leaving little room for anything else. Lindbergh had to use a periscope to see in front of the airplane, and he elected not to bring a parachute or radio, to save weight. NASA-Langley Research Center

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of the cockpit blocked the view forward. In a plane that weighed 2,150 pounds (975 kilograms) empty, it carried 451 gallons (1,710 liters) of fuel for a total takeoff weight of 5,135 pounds (2,330 kilograms).

Back in 1927, if you went down in the water, you were gone. There was no satellite tracking, there were no helicopters or airplanes that you could signal. There was no radar. And shipping was nothing like it is today, so rescue from a nearby vessel was highly unlikely. When Lindbergh got behind the controls of that plane and took off, he was all alone with only the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean more than willing to catch him if he fell. And there was less than just a slim chance of him not making it back.

So, the Spirit of St. Louis, shown in figure 2.8, didn’t have a radio, navigational lights, or gas gauges. Lindbergh didn’t even bring a parachute. A radio didn’t do any good over the middle of the ocean and, back in those days, was a lot of weight. The same held true for the navigational lights when the wiring was also factored in. Even gas gauges were redundant, since there would not be much he could do about it if the tanks went dry. But the reverse argument could be made. Each of these could help his chance of survival under some specific circumstances. What if a ship was nearby? Lights and a radio could certainly help. What if he was over land? He should be able to make an emergency landing, but there were circumstances where
bailing out was not out of the question. Lindbergh had to balance the potential benefit of each safety item with the problems he would potentially face if he ran out of fuel. And that’s how he decided.

“He was thinking his way all the way around the problem, though,” said Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of Charles Lindbergh. “I think he minimized every possible risk he could except for lack of sleep. And if he had had a good seven hours worth of sleep, he would have really changed his risk factor.”

Lindbergh didn’t even use a typical leather pilot’s seat. Instead, he used a wicker chair. He did, however, equip himself with four sandwiches, two canteens of water, and an inflatable, rubber life raft.

Lindbergh believed that for a multi engine aircraft, there was only a greater risk of an engine failure, even though most of the other competitors were using that type of aircraft. Today, a Boeing 767 flies overseas with only two engines. If one fails, it still has enough power to reach land by either turning around or by continuing on, whichever distance is shorter. That wasn’t necessarily the case for the multi – engine aircraft of that time.

“He was doing things like cutting the corners off of his map, which is really a negligible weight,” said Erik Lindbergh. “And yet when you look at the competitors, some of them had champagne and croissants on board so they could party when they got there. But they never made if off the ground. So, attention to detail and reducing the risk factors was critical to him surviving the flight.”

Charles Lindbergh became an instant international hero on the evening his wheels touched down in Paris. And people’s interest in aviation exploded. Charles Lindbergh said, “I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.”

Erik Lindbergh said of his grandfather’s accomplishment, “Before he flew across the Atlantic, people who flew in airplanes were known as barnstormers and daredevils and flying fools. And after he flew across the Atlantic, people who flew in airplanes were known as pilots and passengers. It truly was a paradigm shift if there ever was one.”

As a result of this new popularity, referred to as the Lindbergh boom, in the United States the number of applications for a pilot’s license tripled and the number of licensed aircraft quadrupled during 1927. The number of passengers flying aboard U. S. airlines also dramatically increased from 5,782 in 1926 to 173,405 in 1929. Nowadays, the aviation transportation sector is a $300 billion industry.

Now that the idea was hatched, what to name it?

“The letter X initially stood for the variable for the person’s name that funded the prize, just like the Orteig Prize,” Diamandis said. “It worked because $10 million was the number I thought was the right number. I wanted it to be enough money to be of substantial importance to the world, but not so big that it would attract the Lockheeds or Boeings. I didn’t want the winner to be a traditional player. I wanted it to be somebody who was going to really work hard on how to do this thing cost effectively and worry about every penny spent.”

Finding a title sponsor to put up the prize money proved very difficult, so the X hung around for a lot longer than Diamandis had anticipated. But when the title sponsor did come along, the Xhad already become symbolic. X stood for the Roman numeral ten, as in

A N S A R I

PRIZE

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Fig. 2.9. Initially, the X in the X Prize was only a place holder to be replaced when Peter Diamandis found a title sponsor. But gradually it took on its own significance. X stood for $10 million, X had been used for the early X-planes, and X meant mysterious or extreme. So, when a title sponsor did come along, the X remained. X PRIZE Foundation

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the number of millions in the prize. X denoted a vehicle of an exper­imental nature, as with the X-planes. X also had the connotation of being extreme or mysterious. “So, after we found the Ansaris,” Diamandis said, “we decided to keep it and make it the Ansari X Prize.” The logo is shown in figure 2.9.

When Burt Rutan rolled out SpaceShipOne in April of 2003, he complimented Diamandis, saying that the Ansari X Prize rules had stood the test of time and that it was the brilliant set of rules that allowed the competition to proceed.

After coming up with the concept of the Ansari X Prize in 1994, it took better than a year and a half to nail down the rules. Diamandis stated that the rules were 80 percent of battle. Making them simple, understandable, and bulletproof was an imperative. The rules had to define a precise goal that was very difficult to reach but not com­pletely unattainable. The rules in brief are given in table 2.2.

“I consulted with many of the people who would become teams later on. I reached out to many of the entrepreneurial players in the space community to get their input,” Diamandis said.

Table 2.2 Anasari X Prize Rules in Brief

The spacecraft must:

[1] reach a suborbital altitude of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles or 328,000 feet)

[2] carry three people (or one pilot plus the equivalent weight of two other people)

[3] repeat the same flight within two weeks

[4] be designed, built, and launched using only private funding

[5] return safely to Earth with crew unharmed

Initially, the rules were drafted to require the spacecraft to reach an altitude of 100 miles (160 kilometers). By comparison, Sputnik orbited above Earth at a maximum height of 588 miles (947 kilometers), while the International Space Station typically orbits a little more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) up. But when the reentry characteristics of a spacecraft returning to Earth from 100 miles (160 kilometers) up were analyzed, the heating was determined to be too high. The expense and time to develop an engineering solution for this would have been cost prohibitive to many—if not all—of the teams. An altitude of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles or 328,000 feet) was then selected.

This number was not exactly easy to reach, though. “There was a big debate about what was officially space,” Diamandis said. “The U. S. Air Force viewed it at 50 miles [80.5 kilometers], and the Europeans looked at it as 100 kilometers [62.1 miles]. We didn’t want the X Prize to be in contention, so we moved it to the higher of the two.” In order for a contestant to claim the Ansari X Prize, it was neces­sary to verify the altitude that was reached. So, each spacecraft would have to carry a flight recorder, also known as the gold box, provided by the X Prize Foundation to monitor the flight profile. Figure 2.10 illustrates the altitude requirement of the Ansari X Prize.

The next rule to decide was how many people the spacecraft would have to carry. “I didn’t want the vehicle to be considered a stunt,” explained Diamandis. “I wanted the vehicle winning the X Prize to potently go into revenue service. So, we basically focused on having a vehicle that could fly with a pilot and two paying passengers and required that the vehicle have three seats.”

However, three people were not actually required to occupy the spacecraft during the attempts to reach space. The rules state: “The flight vehicle must be built with the capacity (weight and volume) to carry a minimum of three adults of height 6 feet 2 inches (188 centimeters) and weight 198 pounds (90 kilograms) each.”

So, right before a launch attempt, three people had to strap into the spacecraft while it was on the ground in order to show that they fit. For each passenger not remaining onboard for the launch, 198 pounds (90 kilograms) of ballast would be added as a replacement.

“And the key rule, which was probably most important, was that the vehicle had to do two flights within two weeks,” Diamandis said. “What that meant was that the cost of the second flight was really touch labor and fuel.”

This rule was crucial in demonstrating the robustness of the design because it required that 90 percent of the spacecraft’s mass, excluding propellant mass, had to be original and could not be

and International Space Station. It is called suborbital because the altitude is not sufficient for a spacecraft to achieve orbit. X PRIZE Foundation

к___________________ J replaced. The spacecraft had to return substantially intact. If after the first flight major components were damaged to the point where they could not be used again, or if too many materials had to be swapped out, then this rule would filter out those designs that were not durable or reusable.

“My mission in the X Prize was to bring about a new generation of privately owned and privately operated spacecraft that can service a marketplace,” Diamandis said. Many people, including Diamandis, viewed the space industry, in terms of human spaceflight, as stagnant. The two primary types of vehicles used to escape the confines of gravity remained for decades the Russian Soyuz and the U. S. Space Shuttle, which first flew in 1967 and 1981, respectively. There is a better chance of a person winning the lottery than flying aboard one of these spaceships. And even in the case of a lucky golden ticket, this would not necessarily secure a seat. Since government space agencies operate these vehicles, they have little interest in extending opportunities to the public at large.

This shortcoming of government space agencies was specifically what Diamandis wanted to challenge by requiring that the Ansari X Prize be privately funded. To that end, the following rule was put into place:

Flight vehicles will have to be privately financed and built. Entrants will be precluded from using a launch vehicle substantially developed under a government contract or grant. Entrants will be prohibited from receiving any direct funding, subsi­dies, and grants of money, goods, or services from any government (or otherwise tax-supported entity). Entrants will be permitted to utilize government facilities if access to such facilities is generally available to all entrants. Any such goods or services used in connection with the competition must be available to other entrants on similar terms.

Entrants will be permitted to utilize subsystems previously developed by a government agency that are currently available on a commercial or equal – access government-surplus basis, or for which manufacturing rights and specifications are available on an equal-access basis.

The competition was not without risk to its participants. However, since the whole idea of the Ansari X Prize was to promote public space travel, one of the more obvious rules was that the crew had to return to Earth safe and sound after each attempt.

Early on, as the X Prize Foundation started to pull together, Diamandis and Bryon K. Lichtenberg, who was one of the cofounders of the organization, met with Erik Lindbergh. Lichtenberg, a two- time shuttle astronaut, was one of the very first people Diamandis spoke to about the X Prize idea and was his partner in Zero Gravity Corporation.

Diamandis had felt it important to have a connection with the Lindbergh family. But the Lindbergh Foundation wasn’t initially interested because its focus was on supporting projects that empha­sized the balance between technology and a healthy planet. “I think people have sort of lost that dream of space travel after Apollo faded and space flight became routine and boring,” said Lindbergh.

But it was hard for Lindbergh’s passion not to be stirred up by the ideas of Diamandis. “What really got me was the fact that this could ignite that kind of inspiration again,” said Lindbergh. “And there is a tremendous amount of knowledge that we need for space travel that will translate directly into the quality of life here on Earth, such as environmental technology and closed-loop living systems.”

Lichtenberg talked about the view from space aboard Columbia in 1983, where he was the very first Space Shuttle payload specialist, and of his time on Atlantis nine years later. Lindbergh remembered reading about Frank White and his overview perspective of Earth from space, as well as Jim Lovell being able to cover up Earth with his thumb as he looked out the window of his space capsule.

“These astronauts had an overview perspective that could be tremendously valuable in terms of how we navigate the present so that we can thrive and survive into the future,” said Lindbergh. He participated in the unveiling of the X Prize under the St. Louis Arch in 1996, but he would soon be drawn in much deeper.

This was all a lot of careful planning, but $ 10 million of prize money does not just materialize out of thin air. This figure does not even include all the expenses needed to run the competition. All totaled, it was a lot of spacebucks. The early conceptual drawing in figure 2.11 gives an indication of the broad, forward thinking of the ambitious X Prize.

In 1995, Diamandis established the X Prize Foundation in Rockville, Maryland, with the help of Maryniak, Lichtenberg, and Colette M. Bevis. That same year Diamandis met Doug King, the president of the St. Louis Science Center, who offered to help raise $2.5 million if the X Prize Foundation would relocate there. St. Louis embraced Diamandis, and with its aviation heritage, the decision to move was an easy one.

During a fundraiser in St. Louis, a local businessman named Alfred Kerth reminded Diamandis that Charles Lindbergh created the Spirit of St. Louis Organization. This organization was a group of ten business leaders who contributed a total of $25,000 to purchase the aircraft used by Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic Ocean. “And Spirit of St. Louis—the airplane—was named after that organization,” Diamandis said. “So Kerth said, ‘Let’s get one hundred people to contribute $25,000 or more from the St. Louis region and call them the New Spirit of St. Louis Organization. It will be the funding mechanism to kick this whole thing off.’ ”

On May 18, 1996, three days before the anniversary of Lindbergh’s historic flight, under the St. Louis Arch, the X Prize was announced. Guests of the ceremony included twenty astronauts; Dan Golden, the administrator of NASA at the time; the Lindbergh family; and Burt Rutan, who on that day made his interest clear. The race was on, and teams had until January 1, 2005, to claim the X Prize.

By 2001, the X Prize was still not fully funded. Bob Weiss, movie producer and vice-chairman of the X Prize Foundation, proposed the idea of a hole-in-one insurance policy to Diamandisrize. With a hole-in-one insurance policy, an insurance company essentially bets against an event happening. This is not uncommon in golf tournaments, where a player can win a car or a great deal of money if he or she makes a hole-in-one on a specific hole on the golf course. If no player makes a hole-in-one, then the insurance company keeps the insurance premiums paid by the tournament organizers and pays nothing out. However, if a player does make a hole-in-one, then the insurance company pays the check.

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Fig. 2.11. The vision of Peter Diamandis and the X Prize Foundation was to rekindle the public’s interest in space and foster the development of private spacecraft that would open the door to the stars for more than just the very limited number of astronauts from government-sponsored programs. X PRIZE Foundation

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The X Prize Foundation moved ahead with the insurance idea, but premiums were not inexpensive. “I would have to pay out $50,000 every other month sometimes and a large balloon payment at the end,” Diamandis said. “And there were times that I would literally have a week in which to raise $50,000 or I would lose all the premiums I had paid earlier.”

After being in existence for six years, the X Prize was much more fragile than most people knew. It was very difficult to raise money to support the day-to-day operations, let alone funding the $10 million prize money.

During the height of Erik Lindbergh’s involvement, he had become the vice president of the X Prize Foundation. In 2002, he retraced his grandfather’s famous flight on the 75th anniversary of the historic crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by the Spirit of St. Louis. Flying a modern Lancair Columbia 300, named the New Spirit of St. Louis, Eric Lindbergh flew the same flight path but did so in a little more comfort and safety. He could actually see out the front windshield and did not require the use of a periscope. He averaged 184 miles per hour (296 kilometers per hour), and the flight lasted 19.5 hours com­pared to 108 miles per hour (174 kilometers per hour) and 33.5 hours for his grandfather’s transatlantic flight.

“When I decided to fly across the Atlantic in the Columbia, I did it really to support X Prize,” Erik Lindbergh said. “That was the main thrust of it. That was one of many efforts by individual directors that saved X Prize at a specific period in its history.”

Almost one million dollars was raised, with a majority going to the X Prize. But that wasn’t enough to keep it from ditching before reaching the final destination.

Anousheh Ansari

Anousheh Ansari’s fascination with space and the stars began when she was a little girl living in her native country of Iran. At sixteen, she and her family immigrated to the United States. Ansari, shown in figure 2.12, did not speak English, but education was extremely important to her family. She would pick up the language, a bachelor’s in electronics and computer engineering, and a master’s in electrical engineering on the way to co-founding Telecom Technologies, a multi – million-dollar telecommunications company.

In all this time, her desire for spaceflight never wavered. “Because I didn’t become a professional astronaut, I have been looking for other ways,” Ansari said. “So, even before meeting Peter Diamandis, I did a lot of looking around on the Web and other places, trying to see what was happening with the space program and if there would be an opportunity for civilians to fly. I had visited the X Prize website and a couple of other websites where they were advertising for tickets for suborbital flights. I did a little bit more research and found out they were basically just doing a lot of conceptual design of these suborbital vehicles to compete in the X Prize. I believed that it would happen soon enough, and probably my first experience or first chance would be on suborbital flight.”

In 2001, Fortune magazine ran an article about the forty wealthiest people under the age of forty. Ansari made number thirty-three on the list, ahead of Jim Carrey at number thirty-six and Tiger Woods at number forty. But in a sidepiece, Ansari made it clear to the world that space was her number-one goal. There, Ansari had expressed “her desire to board a civilian-carrying, suborbital shuttle.”

“I read that like three times,” Diamandis said. “So, I convinced myself that it really said suborbital flight.”

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Fig. 2.12. Captivated by space from her childhood days, Anousheh Ansari never stopped believing that some day she would make it to space. In 2004, the Ansari family was officially named the title sponsor of the X Prize. Two years later, Anousheh Ansari’s dream came true. Prodea Systems, Inc.

All rights reserved. Used under permission of Prodea Systems, Inc.

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Diamandis and Lichtenberg immediately contacted Ansari to arrange a meeting. “From the first moment we sat across the table and started to talk about it, Peter had us sold,” Anousheh Ansari said, speaking of her and her bother-in-law, Amir Ansari, who had shared the same excitement about space.

Ansari began backing the X Prize in 2002. However, it wasn’t until May 2004 that the Ansari family was announced as the title sponsor. “Our sponsorship was absolutely needed for X Prize to succeed,” she noted. “At the time we joined the organization, if we had decided not to, I don’t know if they would have survived. We felt that we couldn’t let that happen. This was too valuable. It was difficult to put together such a good group of people again. The momentum was right. We couldn’t just let it go. And at the same time, the reason we did it was because we love flying to space. And it wasn’t like I want to do it just once, and we knew there were millions of people around the world that felt the same way. We wanted to do something to help build an industry so this would become something that would be available, and you can do it again and again and again.”

Just as the X Prize Foundation faced challenges to keep the prize going, the individual teams faced similar problems. The biggest of these was funding. It wasn’t so much of a technology challenge that the teams had to overcome—the technology to get into space had been around for a long time. The teams were not starting from square one. In fact, with modern materials and computers, a technical leap wouldn’t likely be the limiting factor.

Rutan and his team certainly seemed to be in a very good position. “Some viewed him as the frontrunner,” Diamandis recalled. “Lessons of history are that sometimes the frontrunner doesn’t win. In the Orteig Prize for example, the frontrunner was Admiral Byrd, the first person to fly to the North Pole. He crashed on liftoff. This young upstart, unknown to the rest of the world, Charles Lindbergh, comes along and wins the competition.”

A total of twenty-six teams registered for the Ansari X Prize, representing seven different countries, but not every team that applied made it in. “We probably turned away about half the appli­cations we received,” explained Diamandis. “We required the teams to really demonstrate to us the seriousness of their team and effort. They had to demonstrate by virtue of the people who were involved, the companies who were involved, and they had to show us the primary concept.

“We had numerous teams apply with antigravity and UFO tech­nology. My answer was simple: ‘My office is on the second floor. If you can float up to the second floor, I’m happy to register you.’ ”

Some of the teams that competed did get vehicles into the air and performed flight tests to various degrees, while some hadn’t had the resources necessary to get their programs very far off the ground. Two of the top contenders were Steve Bennett’s Starchaser out of England and Brian Feeney’s da Vinci Project out of Canada, refer to figure 2.13 and figure 2.14, respectively.

“Steve Bennett was the first person to fly an X Prize vehicle, or a vehicle with X Prize logos on it, called Nova, which was the first launch in like thirty years out of the UK,” Diamandis said.

Launched on November 22, 2001, Nova weighed in at 1,643 pounds (747 kilograms). It was unmanned, but the capsule was designed to fit one person. Starchaser had actually developed and launched rockets beginning in 1993, well before the Ansari X Prize was announced, so it was one of the more established teams.

“I didn’t want to apply for the X Prize competition and come across as someone who was ill equipped to deal with it,” said Steve Bennett, the team leader of Starchaser. “It took me about a year to get all my ducks in a row. And we made the application, and Peter accepted it no problem.”

A bigger vehicle was still needed, since the Ansari X Prize required it to fit three people. “We went through a number of ideas and over the years the design evolved,” continued Bennett. “And what happened was it just got simpler and simpler and simpler. So, we

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Fig. 2.13. Having launched over sixteen large rockets since 1993, Starchaser was one of the more experienced teams competing for the Ansari X Prize. Even after the Ansari X Prize, Starchaser rocket development continues.

In 2007, Starchaser won a study contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to further investigate reusable launch vehicles for space tourism. Courtesy of Starchaser Industries

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Fig. 2.14. To avoid the high cost of developing a ground-launched rocket

or a carrier aircraft, Brian Feeney’s da Vinci Project built the world’s largest balloon, capable of holding 3.70 million cubic feet (0.10 million cubic meters) of helium, to lift its Wild Fire rocket to a launch altitude of 70,000 feet (21,340 meters). Brian Feeney, the da Vinci Project

V___________________ J ended up with a very simple ballistic rocket. We discovered that the easiest and simplest and safest way to do this would be to just launch a ballistic rocket just like they launched Alan Shepard in back in ’61. Straight up, straight down, and a capsule that can carry three people. And that’s pretty much it.”

The rocket had three main components: a booster, which was the Starchaser 5 rocket powered by liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene fuel engines; the capsule, which was called Thunderstar; and the launch escape system.

Figure 2.15 shows Bennett standing next to the Nova 2 after piloted drop tests from 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) were conducted.

Bennett admitted, “The biggest challenge was, I guess, raising the finances, because the technology to do this kind of thing has been around since the 1950s, possibly even the 1940s.”

So, the team had to be creative. Back in 2000, they had pre-sold two of the seats for when they would first attempt the Ansari X Prize.

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Fig. 2.15. Steve Bennett stands next to Nova 2, which was drop tested from an altitude over 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) to test the parachute-recovery system. For each test, a pilot manned the capsule, which was then dropped out the back of a cargo plane. Courtesy of Starch a ser Industries

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Bennett said of the two prospective passengers, “They wanted to basically support the project. And they wanted to fly on the first flight. We got three seats in the capsule. The only condition they made was, ‘Here’s the money, Steve. We’ll give you the money. We’ll give it to you up front, and we’re not even going to come back to you. We don’t care whether it takes a year or ten years. You tell us when it’s ready. We’re not going to hassle you. There is only one condition.’ And the one condition was the third seat had to be occupied by me. Okay. So, they knew I wasn’t a nutcase. They knew that I wanted to do this project and that I wanted to come home to my family.”

The competition really began to heat up midway through 2004, when two teams each secretly notified the X Prize Foundation that they were going for it. Diamantis recalled, “People have to give both confidential notice within 120 days and public notice within 60 days of their attempt to fly. So, we had gotten confidential notice of Rutan’s flight date, and then a few weeks later we got confidential notice from Brian Feeney that the da Vinci Project was going to attempt a flight.

“We thought for a moment we might have to mount flight com­petitions in two separate nations, and funding that and doing a good job of judging was going to be a challenge for us.”

Feeney, who had an aerospace company in the 1980’s that did life – support systems, read an article about the announcement of the Ansar і X Prize while living in Hong Kong. “That was the catalyst for me,” he said. “I stopped what I was doing right away at the time.” Feeney had constantly looked for opportunities that would take him to space. He rallied one of the largest volunteer efforts for a technology project in Canadian history while using a very unconven­tional approach to reach space. At first he looked into developing a carrier aircraft like Scaled Composites had done. “We wanted to do that even before we knew what they were doing. But the cost to do that was just prohibitive. We knew we’d be challenged just to get the money to build the spaceship itself,” Feeney said.

“A ground-launched vehicle required about four times as much energy, thrust, everything else, compared to an air-launched vehicle, whether it was balloon, as in our case, or an aircraft or whatever

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Fig. 2.16. Teams had to give a 120-day confidential notice to the X Prize Foundation that they were going to make an attempt at the Ansari X Prize. As the deadline loomed, Scaled Composites gave its secret notification, and a few weeks later, the da Vinci Project also gave notice. The da Vinci Project finally got a big chunk of funding from GoldenPalace. com, but it proved to be too late in the game. Brian Feeney, the da Vinci Project

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means of getting to that altitude. At the end of the day, I thought the balloon-launch system was a good compromise with the much higher cost of developing a ground-based launch rocket.”

A rocket called Wild Fire, pointing up at 75 degrees, would be tethered to the world’s largest reusable helium balloon. Made of polyethylene, the balloon, measuring in at 150 feet (46 meters) in diameter and 200 feet (61 meters) in length, could contain 3.70 million cubic feet (0.10 million cubic meters) of helium. It would only be 15 percent full at liftoff but would expand as it ascended. The da Vinci Project had successfully tested a scaled-down version of their launch balloon before constructing the final launch balloon.

Figure 2.16 shows the Wild Fire rocket at only 80 percent complete. At an altitude of 70,000 feet (21,340 meters), which is higher than any launch aircraft could fly, Wild Fire would detach and use a hybrid fuel rocket engine to soar into space.

“I never felt in the long run that it was an ideal commercial propo­sition, because the balloon is subject to weather and a multiplicity of things. But it is a cost-effective way for a short program to demon­strate viable technology,” Feeney said.

Robert Goddard built and launched the very first liquid-fuel rocket in 1926, shown in figure 2.17, and is now considered the father of American rocketry. Yet when he first published theories about reach­ing the Moon using a rocket, he drew ridicule, so much so that he fled to the remoteness of Roswell, New Mexico, to continue his pioneer­ing research. Ironically, it was prewar Germany that seemed to take his work more seriously than did his own country.

But Goddard still had a few pretty important believers in his work. Charles Lindbergh had recognized that wings and propellers could

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Fig. 2.17. Robert Goddard was a pioneer in rocketry. In this photo from 1926, he stands next to his invention, the very first liquid-fueled rocket. His breakthroughs were, unfortunately, not enough to shield him from relentless ridicule when he asserted that a large enough rocket could reach the Moon. NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center

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Fig. 2.18. Charles Lindbergh (right) understood early on that airplanes had limitations. He was fascinated by rocketry because he knew this would be the next step. A kindred spirit, Lindbergh helped Robert Goddard (center) to get funding from the Guggenheim family. This photograph from 1935 shows Harry F. Guggenheim (left) visiting for a rocket launch. NASA-Headquarters

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Fig. 2.19. The first man-made object to reach the edge of space, the V-2, was designed and built by Germany during World War II. Thousands and thousands of these ballistic missiles rained down on cities, with Antwerp and London being the targets of the vast majority. After the war, this vengeance or terror weapon became the foundation of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and space programs of the United States and Soviet Union. NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center

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carry an aircraft only so high. Because of this, Lindbergh was very inter­ested in rocketry and in Goddard’s work. Lindbergh was able to help secure funding for Goddard from the wealthy Guggenheim family. Figure 2.18 shows Lindbergh together with Goddard and his benefac­tor for the launch of one of Goddard’s more advanced rockets.

Right after World War II, when the German rocket scientists who worked on the V-2 rockets left for the United States or Russia, the United States asked Lindbergh to go to Germany and assess what was
left of the V-2 program. Figure 2.19 shows a V-2. It was not only a weapon of war, but it also was the foundation upon which the U. S. space program was built. Even an Ansari X Prize team, Canada’s Red Arrow, used it as the basis for their spacecraft.

So, early on, Charles Lindbergh was exposed to the work of Wernher von Braun. And it was von Braun who helped the United States to reach the surface of the Moon. It is hard not to see all the connections and parallels between this and the present.

SpaceShipOne may look like an airplane, but it is actually a combination of a missile launching from an aircraft, a spaceship maneuvering above the atmosphere, and a glider drifting down to Earth. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore