The New Space Race

Ed Bradley Reports On The Private Sector's Race To Space

(CBS) 

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.