The New Space Race

A plan to build the world's first airport for launching commercial spacecraft in New Mexico is the latest development in the new space race, a race among private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs to carry paying passengers into space and to kick-start a new industry, astro tourism.

The man who is leading the race may not be familiar to you, but to astronauts, pilots, and aeronautical engineers – basically to anyone who knows anything about aircraft design – Burt Rutan is a legend, an aeronautical engineer whose latest aircraft is the world's first private spaceship. As he told 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley when he first met him a little over a year ago, if his idea flies, someday space travel may be cheap enough and safe enough for ordinary people to go where only astronauts have gone before.

White Knight and SpaceShipOne are the latest creations of Burt Rutan. They're part of his dream to develop a commercial travel business in space.

"There will be a new industry. And we are just now in a beginning. I will predict that in 12 or 15 years, there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people that fly, and see that black sky," says Rutan.

On June 21, 2004, White Knight took off from an airstrip in Mojave, Calif., carrying Rutan's spaceship. It took 63 minutes to reach the launch altitude of 47,000 feet. Once there, the White Knight crew prepared to release the spaceship.

The fierce acceleration slammed Mike Melvill, the pilot, back in his seat. He put SpaceShipOne into a near vertical trajectory, until, as planned, the fuel ran out.

Still climbing like a spent bullet, Melvill hoped to gain as much altitude as possible to reach space before the ship began falling back to earth.

By the time the spaceship reached the end of its climb, it was 22 miles off course. But it had, just barely, reached an altitude of just over 62 miles — the internationally recognized boundary of space.

It was the news Rutan had been waiting for. Falling back to Earth from an altitude of 62 miles, SpaceShipOne's tilting wing, a revolutionary innovation called the feather, caused the rocket plane to position itself for a relatively benign re-entry and turned the spaceship into a glider.

SpaceShipOne glided to a flawless landing before a crowd of thousands.

"After that June flight, I felt like I was floating around and just once in a while touching the ground," remembers Rutan. "We had an operable space plane."

Rutan's "operable space plane" was built by a company with only 130 employees at a cost of just $25 million. He believes his success has ended the government's monopoly on space travel, and opened it up to the ordinary citizen.

"I concluded that for affordable travel to happen, the little guy had to do it because he had the incentive for a business," says Rutan.

Does Rutan view this as a business venture or a technological challenge?

"It's a technological challenge first. And it's a dream I had when I was 12," he says.

Rutan started building model airplanes when he was seven years old, in Dyenuba, Calif., where he grew up.

"I was fascinated by putting balsa wood together and see how it would fly," he remembers. "And when I started having the capability to do contests and actually win a trophy by making a better model, then I was hooked."

He's been hooked ever since. He designed his first airplane in 1968 and flew it four years later. Since then his airplanes have become known for their stunning looks, innovative design and technological sophistication.

Rutan began designing a spaceship nearly a decade ago, after setting up set up his own aeronautical research and design firm. By the year 2000, he had turned his designs into models and was testing them outside his office.

"When I got to the point that I knew that I could make a safe spaceship that would fly a manned space mission -- when I say, 'I,' not the government, our little team -- I told Paul Allen, 'I think we can do this.' And he immediately said, 'Go with it.'"

Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and is one of the richest men in the world. His decision to pump $25 million into Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, was the vote of confidence that his engineers needed to proceed.

"That was a heck of a challenge to put in front of some people like us, where we're told, 'Well, you can't do that. You wanna see? We can do this," says Pete Sebold.

Work on White Knight and SpaceShipOne started four years ago in secret. Both aircraft were custom made from scratch by a team of 12 engineers using layers of tough carbon fabric glued together with epoxy. Designed to be light-weight, SpaceShipOne can withstand the stress of re-entry because of the radical way it comes back into the atmosphere, like a badminton shuttlecock or a birdie.

He showed 60 Minutes how it works.

"Feathering the wing is kind of a dramatic thing, in that it changes the whole configuration of the airplane," he explains. "And this is done in space, okay? It's done after you fly into space."

"We have done six reentries. Three of them from space and three of them from lower altitudes. And some of them have even come down upside down. And the airplane by itself straightens itself right up," Rutan explains.

By September 2004, Rutan was ready for his next challenge: an attempt to win a $10 million prize to be the first to fly a privately funded spacecraft into space, and do it twice in two weeks.

"After we had flown the June flight, and we had reached the goal of our program, then the most important thing was to win that prize," says Rutan.

That prize was the Ansari X Prize – an extraordinary competition created in 1996 to stimulate private investment in space.

The first of the two flights was piloted, once again, by Mike Melvill.

September's flight put Melville's skill and training to the test. As he was climbing out of the atmosphere, the spacecraft suddenly went into a series of rolls.

How concerned was he?

"Well, I thought I could work it out. I'm very confident when I'm flying a plane when I've got the controls in my hand. I always believed I can fix this no matter how bad it gets," says Melville.

SpaceShipOne rolled 29 times before he regained control. The remainder of the flight was without incident, and Melvill made the 20-minute glide back to the Mojave airport. The landing on that September afternoon was flawless.

Because Rutan wanted to attempt the second required flight just four days later, the engineers had little time to find out what had gone wrong. Working 12-hour shifts, they discovered they didn't need to fix the spacecraft, just the way in which the pilots flew it.

For the second flight, it was test pilot Brian Binnie's turn to fly SpaceShipOne.

The spaceship flew upward on a perfect trajectory, breaking through to space.

Rutan's SpaceShipOne had flown to space twice in two weeks, captured the X Prize worth $10 million, and won bragging rights over the space establishment.

"You know I was wondering what they are feeling, 'They' being that other space agency," Rutan says laughing. "You know, quite frankly, I think the big guys, the Boeings, the Lockheeds, the nay-say people at Houston, I think they're looking at each other now and saying 'We're screwed!' Because, I'll tell you something, I have a hell of a lot bigger goal than they do!"

"The astronauts say that the most exciting experience is floating around in a space suit," says Rutan, showing off his own plans. "But I don't agree. A space suit is an awful thing. It constrains you and it has noisy fans running. Now look over here. It's quiet. And you're out here watching the world go by in what you might call a 'spiritual dome.' Well, that, to me, is better than a space suit because you're not constrained."

He also has a vision for a resort hotel in space, and says it all could be accomplished in the foreseeable future. Rutan believes it is the dawn of a new era.

He explains, "I think we've proven now that the small guys can build a space ship and go to space. And not only that, we've convinced a rich guy, a very rich guy, to come to this country and build a space program to take everyday people to space."

That "rich guy" is Richard Branson, the English billionaire who owns Virgin Atlantic Airlines. Branson has signed a $120 million deal with Rutan to build five spaceships for paying customers. Named "Virgin Galactic," it will be the world's first "spaceline." Flights are expected to begin in 2008.

"We believe by flying tens of thousands of people to space, and making that a profitable business, that that will lead into affordable orbital travel," says Rutan.

Rutan thinks there "absolutely" is a market for this.

With tickets initially going for $200,000, the market is limited. Nevertheless, Virgin Galactic says 38,000 people have put down a deposit for a seat, and 90 of those have paid the full $200,000.

But Rutan has another vision. "The goal is affordable travel above low-Earth orbit. In other words, affordable travel for us to go to the moon. Affordable travel. That means not just NASA astronauts, but thousands of people being able to go to the moon," he says. "I'd like to go. Wouldn't you?"

By Harry Radliffe