The Future of Civilan Space Travel

Space is a frontier that mankind has sought to concur for many years, but up until now if the average person entertained the idea of venturing into space within their lifetime they would not have been taken seriously by most, if not all, reasonable people. However, within the last few months several events have taken place that may lead that reasonable person to rethink his position on the matter of, privately funded civilian space travel. All this is now possible because a few people who shared a common goal gathered together and decided to further their cause for the benefit of all mankind. “The X PRIZE Foundation was established in 1994 as an educational nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring private, entrepreneurial advancements in space travel”, and the sole purpose of its founders was , “to realize the dream of spaceflight for the general public” (Diamandis). What a great place the world would be if men like these were more common.

Just recently, In the Months leading up to the culmination of the X-Prize there were two serious contenders for the fabled X PRIZE, A rocket known by its builders as Wild Fire, and an airplane referred to buy its builders as, Space Ship 1. “The da Vinci Project, led by Brian Feeney of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, registered as a contender for the X PRIZE on June 2, 2000.” (About the da Vinci Project). Their Craft Wild Fire has a flight plan that first consists of the rocket being hoisted to 24 km. (80,000 feet) via hot air balloon, at which point the rocket slung under the balloon at an 80 degree angel, from the horizon, fires and hopefully delivers the rocket and crew into space. The manner in which the da Vinci Project went about reentry is somewhat low tech, “A reentry chute is deployed T plus 15 seconds after apogee and includes the base area high temperature cone which doubles as the landing absorption cushion to protect the engines.” Unfortunately this team had some funding problems causing them to deviate slightly form their original plan of attack which did not include the hot air balloon (What happens during the Actual Flights).

On the other hand, Space Ship 1 is being constructed by a company called Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC based out of Mojave, California which is run by the very experienced Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, and funded by Paul Allen of Microsoft (Leonard). SS1’s means of getting into space and back is significantly more complex than that of Wild Fires. It is to ride attached to the under belly of the White Knight to an altitude of about 14 km. (45,000 feet), at which time its rocket fires shortly after being release, and during it’s level glide path. Then, SS1 pulls a high G-force turn to the vertical until the rocket quits. After coasting for some time, preferably to an altitudeover 100 km, comes the reentry which is the most difficult part, and presented the greatest engineering challenge to the designers of SS1. However, they came up with a rather ingenious way to go about the task of reentry, SS1 actually raises it’s oversized tail section thus causing a great deal of drag and significantly lowering the reentry speed, hence also lowering the friction, and therefore the heat induced by the atmosphere upon the space frame and its connected components (Space Ship One). In Short, It makes things a little safer, that is assuming of course the processes of reentry could ever be safe considered safe!

On the 4th of October 2004 an event occurred that may have greater implications for mankind than ever before in recorded history. On this day a new frontier was opened to each and every one of us, hopefully it will inspire as many young minds as did Wilber and Orville Wright’s first flights at Kitty Hawk. SS1, piloted by none other than 51-year-old Brian Binnie reached an altitude of 112.2 Kilometers (69.7 miles). This was 12.2 Km. more than required to officially enter into space flight. In fact Binnie was not the first privately backed pilot to enter into space but the second in the same number of weeks, in of course the same aircraft, thus securing their places in history as the winners of the ANSARI X-prize. This great feat entitled Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC, lead by Burt Rutan and, backed finical by the deep pockets of Paul Allen, to the 10 million dollar purse (Leonard). Money obviously was not their motivation considering the project cost more than that, to the tone of some 20 million dollars (Coren). Last of all but certainly not least, Michael Melville and Brian Binnie, officially received, from the FAA, their astronauts wings making them without a doubt the coolest people on earth.

Although the first civilian craft into, space SS1 will not be the last. On 1 October 2004 The Canadian Government gave the go-ahead for Wild Fire’s attempted space shot that is in some ways more impressive than that of SS1’s. The da Vinci Project has been