It was not much bigger than the four-wheel drives gathered in the dust to watch, but a small, oddly shaped white machine made history on Monday when it soared through the Californian sky to become the world’s first commercial craft in space.
The three and a half minutes SpaceShipOne spent in space, 100km above the Mojave desert, was a small step for the tiny proportion of punters rich enough to take a tourist flight beyond the outer atmosphere.
After SS-1‘s pilot safely glided his craft back to earth, its backers said they hoped that very brief — and relatively low — sojourns in space could be but a decade away for thousands of wealthy tourists.
The launch of the privately funded craft was billed as a ”cosmic Woodstock”.
Space obsessives converged on the small desert town of Mojave early on Monday to witness the tiny rocket-cum-glider fire its way into the aerospace record books, reaching 10 times the height of a commercial jet’s cruising altitude on its one-hour, 28-minute maiden flight. Hotels were booked up, souvenir T-shirts were on sale and the National Space Society even held an all-night rave.
Usually empty desert roads were jammed at 6.30am, with the launch arranged early to beat the winds that sweep across Mojave by day. After the runway was cleared of endangered desert tortoises, SS-1 departed at 6.47am, slightly behind schedule, hanging beneath its carrier aircraft, White Knight, a turbojet-powered sailplane.
The sun was low in the sky, helping spectators watch the moment when, after climbing to 46 000ft, White Knight released SS-1. Hollering with delight, space fans — and the project’s commercial backers — saw the trails in the sky as pilot Mike Melvill (62) fired up the rockets for 80 seconds.
Melvill, a South African, briefly achieved weightlessness as he became a fully fledged astronaut, rather than a mere commercial pilot, as SS-1 climbed to ”suborbital” space. ”Beautiful sight, Mike,” gushed mission control as he safely glided his craft back to Earth half an hour later.
Standing on the runway beside his ship after the flight, the elated pilot described seeing the curvature of the Earth. ”I feel great, I really do. The flight was spectacular. Looking out of the window there were clouds over the LA basin that looked like snow. It was a mind-blowing experience. The colours were pretty staggering.”
According to The Star newspaper, Melvill was born in Johannesburg, raised in Durban, and attended nearby Hilton College. He and his wife Sally, who is from KwaZulu-Natal, went to the UK in the mid-sixties where they married. They now live in Tehachapi, California, near the Mojave desert, said the paper.
In 1997 Melvill decided to fly a homebuilt airplane, a Rutan-designed ”Long-EZ,” to South Africa, with the brother of his employer, Dick Rutan, accompanying him in his own homebuilt airplane. Rutan persuaded him to make it an around-the-world trip.
Melvill’s round-the-world visit home took him nearly three months and 232 hours in the cockpit, said The Star.
Asked what he planned to do next, he said: ”I think I’ll back off for a little bit and ride my bike.”
Alex Rodriguez, a young spectator, was similarly enthused. ”After this it’s probably going to be like they’re sending people up there every day, so I want to be the first one.”
The people of Mojave, almost 160km from Los Angeles, hope their humble airport will become the world’s leading spaceport. The federal aviation administration has granted it a licence to be America’s first inland spaceport and it is now known as a civilian flight test centre.
In turn, investors hope SS-1‘s flight heralds the start of space tourism, if not for the masses then for a wealthy minority.
There is already a new space race of sorts, fuelled by personal dreams and private wallets, not state funds. Burt Rutan, the SS-1 designer who also devised the Voyager aircraft which flew around the world nonstop without refuelling in 1986, spoke of an ”enormous, pent-up hunger to fly in space”.
Paul Allen, the philanthropist and businessman who founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, was hungry enough to put up more than $20-million for SS-1.
More than 20 companies, including three from Britain, are competing for the Ansari X prize, a $10-million (£5,45-million) trophy offered to the first private craft capable of taking three people to suborbital space. The key to the competition is that a three-seater plane must reach space twice within a fortnight — suggesting it could be commercially viable. SS-1 now leads the field. Commentators believe it could claim the prize by the end of the summer.
Analysts say the market for private space travel could be huge. In a 2002 study,13 000 Americans declared themselves willing to spend more than $90 000 to fly in space.
Space tourist
A businessman, Dennis Tito, paid almost $20-million to become the first space tourist in 2001, visiting the International Space Station on a Russian craft. Space Adventures, the company that helped get him there, represents a host of companies planning future flights in space and already offers ”zero gravity” flights on special planes.
Tito has been followed by Mike Shuttleworth, a millionaire from South Africa, and Greg Olsen, an American currently training for a space flight.
The men behind SS-1 believe commercial flights into the ”low-earth orbit” will be commonplace within 10 years.
Standing at his pilot’s side after SS-1‘s successful return, Rutan said: ”We have a ship that can not only go into space but it is the first time that a winged vehicle can have a carefree re-entry.”
His brother Dick added: ”This is a new frontier of a new space. This is breaking the bubble. When this is done, everybody can do it.”
To boldly go… at just $80 000 a flight
SS-1 is registered as a glider, but can reach Mach 3.5
It took 14 manned test flights before Monday’s — piloted by Mike Melvill (62) — including one in December when the craft spun off the airstrip on landing
Cost per space flight is $80 000 (£43 000). But the owners, Scaled Composites, cannot charge for flights because the company is not licensed under US aviation rules. A licence could cost up to $100-million-300-million.
SS-1 has three seats. The owners calculate six to eight seats and more windows could make it commercially viable.
The SS-1 rocket is fired with laughing gas and rubber. Nitrous oxide (or laughing gas) is used as an oxidiser and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB or rubber) as fuel.
There are no ejection seats.
$10-million is the prize from Ansari X for the first team to launch twice in a fortnight a privately funded spaceship flying 4,8km to 99,2km high. At least 20 teams are competing. The closing date is next year.
In 1912, Raymond Orteig offered $25 000 for the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. It took 15 years for the prize to be claimed. On May 20 1927, Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris after a 33-hour flight from Long Island – Guardian Unlimited Â