Blazing a trail into outer space:
SpaceShipOne and the Ansari X Prize
By Amjad P. Zaidi
“What kind of man would live where there
is no daring? I don’t believe in taking foolish
chances, but nothing can be accomplished
without taking any chance at all.”
– Charles Lindbergh
October 4th 2014 marks the 57th anniversary of Sputnik
1’s launch, the beginning of the Space Age. But ten
years before that date another milestone in spaceflight
was achieved. On October 4th 2004, the world’s first
privately developed spacecraft, “SpaceShipOne”,
rocketed to suborbital space winning the $10 million
Ansari X Prize and into history. It was not the first record
breaking flight of this pivotal spacecraft, however on
that day it proved private spaceflight was achievable
at lower cost and could have a fast turnaround. In
doing so, SpaceShipOne echoed the Orteig Prize won
by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Lindbergh made the
world’s first non-stop transatlantic crossing in his plane
“The Spirit of St Louis” which boosted today’s $746
billion aviation industry. SpaceShipOne’s successful
flight above 100 km was the second within the 14 day
window needed to win the X Prize. Like Lindbergh’s
flight and the launch of Sputnik 1, SpaceShipOne was
the long awaited lift off for the nascent commercial
space industry achieving what was once thought
to be only possible by governments and nations.
“Tier One” through his small private company Scaled
Composites in Mojave. The result was the production
of a new twin boom mother-ship “White Knight”
(which would be the high altitude carrier craft)
and SpaceShipOne, the eventual spacecraft that
would launch a new era. However getting these
designs off the drawing board required funding.
Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, met with Rutan to
discuss various projects. As both became acquainted
with each other, Allen revealed his shared enthusiasm
for space exploration and was excited by Rutan’s
designs for low cost suborbital spacecraft. In 2000,
Allen agreed to form Mojave Aerospace Ventures
with Rutan and fund their target to reach space.
Gathering of visionaries
As with the race to the Moon in the 1960’s a
convergence of events, conditions and people created
the same drive to start the commercial space race.
Despite the promise over time of affordable and safe
access to space, national space programs have
remained at the governmental level with essentially the
same launch technology, high costs and risks. These
have progressively become less favourable to our
increasingly risk averse administrations and the public
at large. Occasionally costly accidents pushed back
programs for years and took lives. For those aspiring
to a future where spaceflight was commonplace,
the time had come to seize their own destiny.
Over three decades visionary plane designer
Burt Rutan had created at least one original aircraft
a year including some notable firsts, such as the
circumnavigatory Voyager. In the 1990s he began
setting his sights higher, challenging the established
approach of discarding single use expensive chemical
rockets and returning to the concept of lifting bodied
craft, like the X-15 in the 1960s, as a way to reach
space. To that end he directed a secret project,
Paul Allen (left) and Burt Rutan discuss the results after a test flight
of SpaceShipOne. Credit: Scaled Composites, LLC
Around the same time, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis,
founder of the X Prize Foundation had rediscovered the
Orteig Prize as a template for incentivised revolution
through competition. Enlisting title sponsor and the
first female Iranian civilian astronaut Anousheh Ansari,
a cash prize of $10 million was announced in 2002.
A new space race began attracting 26 competitors
from seven countries. Scaled Composites had the head
start on many of its peers before the Ansari X Prize was
even announced, but winning was far from easy. Yet
that is exactly what this small company did with two
spaceflights within five days. The brainchild of one man,
Burt Rutan, coupled with the visionary dreams of Allen,
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