"Rutan's SpaceShipOne 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.
But to Rutan, it's much more than a business venture. "It's a technological challenge first," he says. "And it's a dream I had when I was 12."
Back when he was 12, Rutan watched a program on space on the "Disneyland" television show. The guest was Werner Von Braun, the German engineering genius whose rockets would propel NASA astronauts to the moon...
To make it possible to change the wings' configuration in flight, Rutan designed "the feather." He explains, "We had a new idea to make the re-entry very safe compared to being dangerous like it is with the X-15 or the space shuttle. This is the first airplane that can re-enter the atmosphere without having to be controlled, and yet can still glide in and land on a runway."
The re-entry idea, according to Rutan's wife Tonya, came to him in the middle of the night. "So we're both scattering, finding paper and pencil, she recalls. "And then he said, 'It's like shuttlecock. You know.' And he explained to me, you know, 'Think of a- a shuttlecock. And that's how we're gonna do it.'"
No matter how you throw or hit a badminton shuttlecock, also known as a birdie, it'll come down feathers up. This remarkable innovation was the key that turned SpaceShipOne from an engineer's dream into reality.
Since the dawn of the space age, only 437 people have flown into space. All but two of them were part of government-funded space programs, on government-funded spaceships. The other two worked for Rutan, whose privately-funded space program ended that monopoly...
But before paying customers can fly, the government must grant a license, a bureaucratic process that could slow everything down. Rutan says his spaceships will be safer than the government's: "You know 4 percent of the people who have flown in space have been killed in space accidents. And no way can you have a spaceline and kill 4 percent of your passengers."
Therefore, in addition to a low cost, there must be a high safety factor.
Assuming the government gives him the green light, Rutan plans to be up and flying by 2008. He says that's just the beginning.
"The goal is affordable travel above low earth orbit. In other words," he explains, "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."" (CBS News)
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