Burt Rutan: Building The People's Spaceship
FYI,
"Burt Rutan: Building The People's Spaceship"
SPACE.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051128/sc_space/burtrutanbuildingthepeoplesspaceship
: Stand by for dramatic and radical change in the emerging passenger
: space travel industry--but don't count on NASA or major
: aerospace service providers to propel the public into space anytime
: soon.
: Since the early 1970s, NASA seems to mean No Adult Supervision
: Apparent. The unaffordable space shuttle, for example, is a failure
: in trying to reduce cost for accessing Earth orbit.
: Moreover, companies out to build the space agency's replacement for
: the shuttle -- the Crew Exploration Vehicle -- are doing so under
: an arrangement that cripples innovation, creativity, and the chance
: for breakthroughs.
: Thus says Burt Rutan, the private airplane and spacecraft designer,
: who is anything but shy when it comes to telling the world where he
: thinks the United States - and NASA in particular, has gone wrong
: since the heyday of human spaceflight.
: Rutan, a private rocket designer, is the leader of the privately-
: backed team that flew three suborbital flights last year of the
: piloted SpaceShipOne -- is now busily working on but secretive
: about the details of a new passenger-carrying spaceliner that is
: coming together at his company Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA.
: Rutan made several appearances here Nov. 12, including his first
: stop which was to help judge a student spaceship and spaceport
: design competition hosted by the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space
: Museum and the Department of Aerospace at Metropolitan State
: College. Dozens of student teams vied for awards under the watchful
: eye of event partner, Space Voyage Educational Adventures America
: of Lakewood, Colorado.
: NASA's ability to put humans into space has been fueled by taxpayer
: dollars. But the government has left behind at the launch pad the
: most important payloads--the taxpaying public, Rutan said.
: "In fact, it's more dangerous to fly in space in America now than
: it was earlier. It certainly is more expensive...more difficult,"
: Rutan said. "We've been relying on our taxpayer-funded research
: organization, Na Say, excuse me, NASA."
: The true role for NASA, Rutan said, should be doing the research so
: that American industry can compete favorably with the rest of the
: world. That was the approach taken by the National Advisory
: Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor to the modern day
: NASA, he noted.
: Rutan said that he and his Scaled Composites workers have solved
: the generic, basic safety issues of suborbital manned spaceflight.
: In a succession of flights last year, SpaceShipOne -- and its
: carrier craft, the White Knight that hauls the rocket plane to high-
: altitude for release -- the Scaled Composites team worked on key
: technical issues. By solving them, Rutan is confident that flying
: the public out of the atmosphere can be done safely and affordably.
: "We can show that we can move right into an industry to fly the
: public at the level of safety that the early airliners had," Rutan
: said. Even in that time period, he said, airlines were operating
: 100 times safer than all of government manned spaceflight.
: Rutan says the breakthroughs are simple solutions and what can be
: operated at high-reliability.
: One breakthrough he is determined to achieve is getting the
: entrepreneurial investors, free-spirited tinkerers--the "little
: guys"--to understand that they have it within their capabilities to
: enable public suborbital travel. They need only understand one key
: fact, he says: "I can do this."
: Rutan told a largely student audience that they were not risk
: averse. "You're going to be more creative, more innovative, and
: have a lot more ability to stumble into a big breakthrough," he
: said.
: In a special fund-raising gala, the aerospace designer also
: received the Spreading Wings Award for 2005 from the Wings Over the
: Rockies Air and Space Museum.
: Rutan informed the audience there that he was mad that "the
: Russians are beating America as capitalists", pointing to recent
: Soyuz flights boosting paying passengers up to the International
: Space Station.
: Rutan offered some clues as to what progress is being made on
: building SpaceShipTwo, the commercial version of his space plane
: that will take tourists into space.
: However, the rebel designer remains tight-lipped about schedule.
: The mega-launching plane, a big spaceship that carries eight to ten
: people, and a new rocket motor--all these have to be developed,
: certified, and then put into production, Rutan said.
: "I believe that after it [SpaceShipTwo] flies 10 or 12 years, that
: type [of spaceliner] will fly about 100,000 people outside the
: atmosphere," Rutan said.
: "The ship that we're developing in our shop right now in Mojave
: will have a very large cabin," Rutan explained. A passenger can
: stand up in that compartment and float up to the ceiling...put
: their hands out and tumble.
: "The windows will have handles on them. If you want to look
: outside, you're going to have to go to a window and pull your nose
: up against it and just look," Rutan said. "You're not going to be
: strapped into seats in a small thing with little windows...if you
: do that, that spaceliner will not sell the tickets."
: SpaceShipTwo will be "experience optimized," Rutan said. The
: suborbital craft will cruise high above Earth, he added, giving
: passengers a weightless experience and some seven or eight minutes
: of black sky viewing.
: Flight paths of his commercial spaceship can include over-the-ocean
: travel, gliding above California to a desert landing, Rutan said.
: "We applaud when you stop on the runway. The NASA folk applaud when
: they clear the tower on takeoff," he said.
: Rutan told SPACE.com that he needs to double the size of Scaled
: Composites--now some 150 people--to be able to properly handle a
: roster of projects, including his commercial spaceliner activity.
: "We have a lot of openings for people...not just engineers, but
: people that can help us build research spaceships and production
: spaceships," Rutan explained.
: Rutan said that his company is soon to start aggressively looking
: for enthusiastic young people that want to learn how to build
: spaceships, canvassing the colleges for students that have "fire in
: their eyes."
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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