It's a fascinating conversation, albeit a bit premature. After all, you can't build a space-travel business without a spaceship capable of carrying several passengers profitably and in reasonable safety. "The spacecraft Branson wants doesn't exist yet," says Futron director Phil McAllister. "SpaceShipOne is an experimental craft, and while its flying is very significant and promising, there are still real hurdles before passengers are flying." Richard Branson and Paul Allen are among the many who have been willing to bet on Rutan's ability to overcome serious technical difficulties. But aviation insiders are quick to point out something about Rutan that is often overlooked in the excitement over his novel prototype vehicles: Rutan has yet to turn one of his experimental vehicles into a successful commercial aircraft.
Rutan admits as much but insists this time will be different. "Absolutely, we have to get it certified, produce more than one, and support commercial operations, and I have not done that," he concedes. But he's loath to license the technology to someone who has. "It's way too risky to turn this technology over to another group and let them manufacture and operate it," he says. "I've watched so many of these companies do it wrong with aircraft. They just flat waste money and don't get the job done. It's important that we stay with it until there's a robust, profitable industry flying thousands of people into space." Rutan is determined to build a spaceship roomy enough to allow five people to float around enjoying the sensation of weightlessness and spectacular panoramic views of the earth and outer space. He also wants to be the man who designs a vehicle capable of not just brushing the edge of space, but actually going into orbit. Even Gionta is surprised at Rutan's determination to stay with the commercial program. "I really thought he'd start this program, do the conceptual work, and move on. But he's like a kid in a candy store. He's having more fun than he ever has."
He'd better be, because the new space race already is under way and competition is shaping up as fierce. Rutan's chief rival may ultimately be Elon Musk. A former Internet mogul who in 2002 sold his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, Musk now runs SpaceX in El Segundo, Calif., which is developing an orbital space vehicle. Musk notes that making it into orbit requires going eight times faster and producing 65 times more rocket energy than a suborbital vehicle like SpaceShipOne. Musk has already put more than $50 million into SpaceX and says he is prepared to invest $50 million more. He expects it to take at least five years to get passengers into orbit. In the meantime, SpaceX is generating revenue by booking orders to launch satellites; its first such launch is scheduled for January. "Our earned revenue will be $35 million after a little more than two years of operation," Musk says. "By comparison, the X-Prize was a one-off of $10 million, and it took Burt something like five years to do it."
Meanwhile, SpaceDev, the rocket motor supplier for SpaceShipOne, is also working on a manned orbital vehicle, funding itself not only through rocket motor sales but through contracts with NASA -- which might eventually be willing to pay big bucks to a private company to get government astronauts into orbit. Another source of competition is Zero Gravity Corp., a Fort Lauderdale outfit that takes passengers on a 90-minute flight in a Boeing 727 that flies in vertical arcs, creating the same weightless experience as a Virgin Galactic flight would -- except for much longer and at a fraction of the price. Zero Gravity's founder? None other than X-Prize dreamer Peter Diamandis.
But even as it faces competition in the future, Scaled Composites will not turn its back on the past, Rutan insists. While he devotes his time to the space venture, his engineers are continuing their work on radical new airplanes. The high-altitude Proteus, for example, is being developed under a contract with NASA, which plans to use it to study the environment. There's also a supersonic jet with a hushed sonic boom for flying over populated areas.
Indeed, Rutan doesn't seem the type to forget his roots. At the end of the X-Prize award ceremony in St. Louis, when the giant check had been put aside and the celebrants huddled on the stage to pose for photographers, he suddenly looked up and started searching the skies. While the photographers waited, Rutan kept swiveling and gawking, shielding his eyes against the sun. Then everyone else saw what he was looking at -- a two-foot-long model of SpaceShipOne, banking and swooping through as pretty a sky as can be seen here on earth. Rutan had just received a $10 million check for building the real thing and sending it to space. But he couldn't take his eyes off the tiny model soaring overhead. i
