Science Fiction to Science Fact

n November 6, 2004, the X Prize Foundation presented the Ansari X Prize trophy and the $10 million. Figure 10.1 shows Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Mike Melvill, and Brian Binnie with members of the X Prize Foundation, Peter Diamandis, Gregg Maryniak, Amir Ansari, and Bob Weiss holding up the prize money. In order to also join in the celebration, Allen had flown the entire Scaled Composites team in one of his private airliners to the award ceremony held in St. Louis. Figure 10.2 shows the Scaled Composites team from an earlier photograph.

SpaceShipOne and the Ansari X Prize began on two separate but parallel courses. When they converged, their combined importance was greater than the sum of the two parts. It is difficult to imagine what the result would have been if SpaceShipOne or the Ansari X Prize had been taken out of the equation. Would another team have won the Ansari X Prize with the deadline and the funding set to expire in just a few months? Would the general public have had the awareness or been as involved to the degree that it was without the Ansari X Prize? Without the space mania would investors like Sir Richard Branson have embraced Rutan with such a sizable financial commitment?

The years 1996 to 2004 were very much a different time compared to the years 1919 to 1927. And although the Ansari X Prize was modeled after the Orteig Prize, it certainly was not a one-to-one substitution. At the end of the day, the X Prize Foundation did what they had to do to realize their dream. At the end of the day, Scaled Composites did what they had to do to realize theirs.

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Fig. 10.1. The Ansari X Prize trophy and $10 million check were presented on November 6, 2004, to Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the official partnership between Paul Allen’s Vulcan and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites. The photograph shows Bob Weiss, Gregg Maryniak, Amir Ansari, Peter Diamandis, Brian Binnie, Mike Melvill, Burt Rutan, and Paul Allen (left to right) at the award ceremony hosted in St. Louis. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composite

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Fig. 10.2. In the Mojave Desert, which is referred to as the birthplace of the sonic boom, Scaled Composites, a small company founded by Burt Rutan in 1982, grew from an innovator in aircraft to an innovator in spacecraft. Without the efforts of the whole team, SpaceShipOne would never have been able to burst through Earth’s atmosphere and truly become a spaceship. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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Fig. 10.3. Influenced by the success of the Ansari X Prize, NASA announced the Centennial Challenges in 2005. John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace, an Ansari X Prize competitor, just missed winning the Lunar Lander Challenge in 2006. The lander, shown here, demonstrated vertical takeoff, hover, horizontal translation, and vertical descent, but it couldn’t stick the landing in the end. Dan Linehan

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It is safe to say that those who have dreamed of someday flying into space had their chances become much, much better because of Rutan and the Ansari X Prize, whether it be on a ride in SpaceShipTwo with Virgin Galactic or in another suborbital spacecraft from a different spaceline.