New Enterprise

Monday, June 21st, 2004 – Mojave Spaceport, California

Today marked the first time civilians took hold of space, for the rest of us. And not just young and athletic civilians, but old guys like some of us. The pilot of the first civilian spaceship was 63 years old.

You could tell, as he stood on top of his spacecraft, that he was exhuberant. “With a triumphant thumbs-up and a broad grin, the pilot of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane celebrated becoming the first private-sector astronaut to steer his ship into space.” -MSNBC

This flight into space was different in every way from the government funded NASA flights of the Space Shuttle:

Where the shuttle fills the sky with tons of toxic fumes from its solid rocket boosters, the contrail of SpaceShipOne is clean water and carbon.

Thousands of people are required to launch and land the shuttle, but 22 people are on the flight team for SpaceShipOne.

The shuttle flights cost hundreds of millions of dollars each, but this new civilian craft can be launched and landed for under a million.

The shuttle reentry is a highly dangerous computer controlled fireball, whereas this civilian spaceship is a low-tech, low speed, low temperature, and carefree manual flight.

Shuttles can be relaunched, if needed, every month or so, but SpaceShipOne is ready to be launched again in about three days.

It is true that the shuttle can orbit the earth, remain in space for weeks, and can carry an impressive payload. SpaceShipOne can do none of these things, but give this new industry a few years, and make this comparison again. Rutan and Allen are already working on a viable upscaled spaceship that can both orbit the earth and carry payloads.

Space is now open to the public in a way that NASA never could open it for us. In fact, I think NASA’s days are numbered here, with this first flight of a true civilian spaceship. The government would do well to fund its futer missions with civilian space companies from now on, rather than NASA.

The facts of the suborbital spaceflight:

SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan.
Funded by Paul Allen.
Total project cost is $20 million.
Top altitude, 62 miles (100 kilometers).
5 G’s of acceleration.
Flight time, 90-minutes.
25 minute reentry was “carefree.”

Make no mistake with this little ‘flight.’ This first step into space for the rest of us is as fragile, intrepid and primative as that first flight by the Wright brothers a century ago. But, since we already have the dreams for ourselves, its not a small leap for us to see from this little trip today, the coming of orbiting hotels, airline prices for trips to space, and one hour flights to Tokyo.