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Private Space Travel: Dreamers Hope a Catalyst Will Rise From the Mojave DesertOne week from today, from a runway in a barren reach of the Mojave Desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Burt Rutan will try sending a pilot higher than anyone has ever flown in a private plane.
A longtime designer of innovative aircraft, he plans to shoot his creation, a rocket called SpaceShipOne, 62 miles above the earth. If the flight is successful, Mr. Rutan and his sponsor, Paul G. Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, say it will usher in an age of privately financed space travel and even spacefaring laboratories and manufacturing plants, at down-to-earth prices.
The flight would also be a milestone on the way to winning the Ansari X Prize, a competition begun by a group of entrepreneurs and space enthusiasts in 1996 in hopes of spurring a private space race. Modeled on the $25,000 Orteig Prize, which inspired Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic, the $10 million X prize has spurred the efforts of more than two dozen teams worldwide, some of them financed by patrons like Mr. Allen and John Carmack, a founder of Id Software.
To win the X Prize, SpaceShipOne will have to travel 62 miles up twice in two weeks with three people aboard; Mr. Rutan said those flights would be tried at a later date. In May, SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 40 miles.
more: www.nytimes.com/2004/06/14/scienc... (66)
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14/6/2004 | Viewed 5,803 time(s)
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