Category Space Ship One

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.”