Ken writes:

> SpaceShipOne claims X-Prize

This is only the beginning. The existence of these prizes are very 
reminiscent of the early days of aviation, and they're going to have the same effect on 
space travel: to greatly accelerate private initiatives. Now that the X-Prize 
has been won, the whole works will move here to Las Cruces. We're 4000 feet 
higher than Mohave and have much better enchiladas.

I've included two articles below, one from NASA congratulating Scaled 
Composites on their achievement and the other from the NY Times, outling what's to 
come:

=======================================

Subj:    NASA CONGRATULATES SPACESHIPONE'S X PRIZE WIN
Date:   10/4/04 2:01:59 PM Mountain Daylight Time
From:   [log in to unmask]
Sender: [log in to unmask]

Glenn Mahone/Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington                     Oct. 4, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1898/1600)

RELEASE: 04-329

NASA CONGRATULATES SPACESHIPONE'S X PRIZE WIN

     NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today congratulated the 
SpaceShipOne team on the third successful flight of a private 
human spacecraft. The team also wins the $10 million X Prize 
competition.

"Burt Rutan, Paul Allen and the rest of the SpaceShipOne team 
are to be congratulated for this important achievement. They 
successfully demonstrated a new human spacecraft, a new 
propulsion system and a new high-altitude airborne launch 
platform," said Administrator O'Keefe. "The spirit of 
determination and innovation demonstrated today show that 
America is excited about a new century of exploration and 
discovery. We wish the SpaceShipOne team continued success 
and many more safe flights," he added.

Aboard the International Space Station 230 miles up, the 
Expedition 9 crew, made up of NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and 
Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, noted that for a few 
minutes this morning, they were joined in space by 
SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie. "From Gennady and myself and 
the International Space Station team, congratulations on a 
job well done, and we're really glad SpaceShipOne returned 
safely," said Fincke.

The X Prize Foundation created a $10 million prize designed 
to encourage space tourism through competition among 
entrepreneurs, engineers and other rocketry experts. The 
Ansari X Prize was conceived to reward the team, which 
designed the first private spaceship to successfully fly to a 
sub-orbital altitude of just over 62 miles (100 kilometers) 
on two consecutive flights within two weeks.

The competition was modeled after the Orteig Prize, won in 
1927 by Charles Lindberg for the first non-stop flight 
between New York and Paris. All teams had to be privately 
financed.

For information about SpaceShipOne and the White Knight 
carrier aircraft on the Internet, visit:

http://www.scaled.com/

For information about NASA's exploration initiatives on the 
Internet, visit:

http://www.exploration.nasa.gov/


-end-

========================================

October 4, 2004
SpaceShipOne Visits Space Again to Win $10 Million Prize
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
 
MOJAVE, Calif., Oct. 4 — The private rocket ship SpaceShipOne traveled into 
space and back this morning for the second time in five days, and was declared 
the winner of a $10 million prize intended to spur the development of private 
space flight.

The tiny ship, a sleek combination of rocket and glider designed by the 
engineer Burt Rutan and financed by the billionaire Paul G. Allen, soared beyond an 
altitude of 62 miles, the arbitrary line that is widely accepted as the 
beginning of space.

In a champagne-popping ceremony held on the runway when the spaceship 
returned from its flight, organizers of the Ansari X Prize, a space competition 
modeled on the great contests of the early days of aviation, said SpaceShipOne had 
broken a barrier. Under the rules of the competition, the winners must take a 
pilot and two passengers, or the equivalent weight, to an altitude of at least 
100 kilometers twice within two weeks by the end of this year. This was 
SpaceShipOne's third flight into space this year, but most importantly it was its 
second in five days.

"We are at the birth of a new era, the age of personal space flight," said 
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, who founded the X Prize eight years ago.

SpaceShipOne's journey into space today began shortly before 7 a.m.Pacific 
time, when it was carried to an altitude of nearly 50,000 feet by its mother 
plane, the White Knight, which released it at 7:49 a.m. The pilot, Brian Binnie, 
lit the experimental rocket motor, which burns a combination of rubber and 
nitrous oxide, and ran the motor for its full planned duration of nearly 90 
seconds. 

The craft reached an altitude of 368,000 feet, or 69.7 miles, some 7 miles 
higher than the arbitrary 100-kilometer line that is widely accepted as the 
beginning of space, and the minimum goal for the X Prize. That also far surpassed 
the previous flight altitude record for an air-launched craft, 354,000 feet 
reached by the government's X-15 in 1963.

After its swift ride into the sky, SpaceShipOne returned to earth and touched 
down at 8:13 a.m., greeted by its jubilant organizers.

There had been so much confidence that Mr. Rutan's craft would successfully 
complete its mission that the X Prize Foundation, which has planned for a day 
like this since its founding in 1996, scheduled an awards ceremony Nov. 6.

The prize will be paid by a special "hole-in-one" insurance policy, a common 
method of financing prize contests in which an insurance company essentially 
bets against success. The premium for the policy was paid by Anousheh Ansari, a 
telecommunications entrepreneur in Texas and a board member of the X Prize 
Foundation.

On its two previous forays into space, Michael Melvill was at the controls of 
the sleek, squid-shaped craft. In June, Mr. Melvill barely surpassed the 
100-kilometer limit in a widely publicized test flight. Then, last Wednesday, Mr. 
Melvill once again took the controls to fly to 337,600 feet in the first of 
the two official Ansari X Prize flights.

Both flights underscored the fact that private space flight is still a risky 
endeavor.

In the first flight, Mr. Melvill's plane veered some 22 miles off course 
because of what the Rutan team first thought was a steering glitch but that they 
later determined was an overreaction by Mr. Melvill to the plane's roll. Mr. 
Melvill admitted after the flight that he thought he might die that day like a 
"squashed bug."

In last week's flight, SpaceShipOne went into a series of 29 rapid rolls near 
the top of its ascent. But Mr. Melvill was able to counteract the rolls with 
steering jets and bring the craft safely back to the landing strip, and said 
that he never felt that he was in danger because his training had prepared him 
well for dealing with the problem.

The test pilot for today's flight, Mr. Binnie, is a former Navy fighter 
pilot. He is 51 years old, and flew SpaceShipOne on its first supersonic flight in 
December 2003.

The successful completion of the X Prize competition could usher in a new age 
of commercial human space flight. Several companies are already in the 
running to bring tourists to space. Sir Richard Branson announced a new company last 
week, Virgin Galactic, to commercialize Mr. Rutan's technology. He predicted 
that he would be flying passengers, at $190,000 per ticket, on a new, larger 
version of the spacecraft by 2007.

Another company, Space Adventures, has 100 customers who have put down 
$10,000 deposits for its planned space flights. Space Adventures has already 
arranged visits to the International Space Station for two tourists, Dennis Tito and 
Mark Shuttleworth, who paid a reported $20 million apiece for the privilege. 
Another company, Zero-Gravity Corporation, is offering the experience of 
weightlessness to passengers by flying a cargo jet in repeating parabolas that will 
create weightlessness on every 30-second downward slope, allowing passengers 
to float around in the cabin.

And although Mr. Rutan and Mr. Allen have the clear lead today in selling 
spacecraft through their company, Mojave Aerospace, other X Prize competitors, 
and some not participating in the X Prize competition are still trying to 
develop their own craft to profit from the new era in space — including Blue Origin, 
a secretive company created by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

One of the competing entrepreneurs expressed admiration for the 
accomplishments of Mr. Rutan and Mr. Allen, but insisted that the game is not over and the 
market is not closed. "Being first is a great thing — it's not the only 
thing," said Jeff Greason, the president of Xcor Aerospace. "You'll notice that the 
Wright brothers were not the dominant force in commercial aviation."

The risks of space travel will still be high. "There will be a bad day sooner 
or later," said Marion C. Blakey, administrator of the Federal Aviation 
Administration, said at a briefing with reporters. She added, however, that as long 
as potential passengers truly understood the risks, the government's approach 
would be caveat aviator. 

"This country was founded on people who are risk takers," she said. The goal 
of government will be to minimize the risks for people on the ground who are 
not involved in space flight and did not agree to take on any risk, and to make 
sure that the risks for passengers are fully and accurately described.

Space boosters say regulators can only do so much, and that federal 
legislation is necessary if private space travel is to ever move beyond the realm of 
the stunt. One legislative proposal, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act 
of 2004, would, among other things, limit legal liability for space companies 
in case of accidents. That bill, however, is stalled in the waning days of the 
current Congressional session.

The X Prize is not the end of space competitions. The X Prize Foundation has 
announced an annual X Cup to be held in Las Cruces, N.M., which will serve as 
an air show for rocketry.

And other contests are on the way as well. The goal of the X Prize, reaching 
suborbital space, was achieved by NASA by 1961. Far greater challenges stand 
before anyone who would attempt to orbit the Earth, which calls for greater 
rocket strength and far more resistance to heat and stress upon re-entry.

Robert Bigelow, who heads an aerospace company in Nevada, has announced a $50 
million "Bigelow Prize" for launching a vehicle into orbit by the end of the 
decade. And NASA announced last June that it had created a "Centennial 
Challenges" office to sponsor competitions to solve some of the persistent problems 
of space exploration, with prizes in the millions of dollars, although the 
details are still sketchy.

Despite the challenges ahead, the prospect of an Ansari X Prize winner left 
Ms. Blakey, the F.A.A. administrator, ebullient. "It really is the beginning of 
personal space transportation," she said. 

=======================================

Wirt Atmar

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *