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By John C Ennis (Published 5/04)
"If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but, if you really wish to learn to fly, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks and actual trials."
–Aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright (1901)
The $10 million X-Prize contest developed to spark space tourism based on aviation prizes between 1905 and 1935 stimulated advances in aircraft technology is heating up.
Currently 26 teams from nations including Argentina, Canada, Israel, Romania, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are currently in the midst of an intense race to win a unique top spot in the record books by building and launching a three-person spaceship that can reach a 62.5 mile (100 kilometers) altitude, return safely to Earth and repeat the feat with the same ship within two weeks using private funds.
The effort was kick-started in May 1996 and is scheduled to end January 1, 2005. Currently, dozens of real vehicles have been built with a few already streaking across the sky.
As reported in the Bay Runner's March issue, the current front runner is Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne led by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft billionaire Paul G. Allen.
SpaceShipOne has already chalked up extensive air-time both in glide and rocket-powered flight over the Mojave Desert in California. On December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the first Wright Brothers' flight, SpaceShipOne completed the first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort. This milestone demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded research and also demonstrated that truly low-cost space access is feasible.
But the cash bounty could be snagged by anyone. Take a closer look at what an earlier aviation prize demonstrates: Admiral Richard Byrd was the front-runner for the Orteig prize awarded on completion of the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. But Byrd crashed on takeoff and was the first of nine teams to fail to complete the flight before a virtually unknown upstart named Charles Lindbergh won the $25,000 prize in 1927.
Scientist, CEO to become Third Space Tourist
An American researcher and entrepreneur is set to be the next paying visitor into space to the International Space Station (ISS).
Greg Olsen, a 58-year-old scientist who heads the New Jersey-based company Sensors Unlimited, Inc., plans to ride a Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS within the next 12 months.
Olsen is paying $20 million for the space trip, which was recently announced by the space tourism firm Space Adventures.
Space Adventures broked the flights of the world's first two space tourists American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth who visited the ISS in 2001 and 2002, respectively.
- John C. Ennis
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