SpaceShipOne Designer Aims for Flight Jackpot

Pioneering aircraft designer Burt Rutan, whose Space- ShipOne manned rocket became the first privately funded vehicle to reach space last month, said Tuesday that he would try to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize this fall.

The prize, funded by private donors and created to spur commercial spaceflight, is being offered to the first vehicle to fly three people into space, return them safely to Earth and then repeat the exercise within two weeks. The feat must be accomplished by the end of this year.

Last month SpaceShipOne, piloted by 62-year-old Michael Melvill, became the first commercial vehicle to climb to 328,491 feet, which is widely regarded as the beginning of space.

While the vehicle met the altitude requirement for the Ansari X Prize and put Rutan’s vehicle in the forefront to win it, the mission did not have the required load of three passengers.

“We’re going for it,” Rutan said during a news conference at Santa Monica Airport. The first X Prize flight is to take place Sept. 29 at Mojave, with a second flight Oct. 4.

It was on Oct. 4, 1957, that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, ushering in the Space Age and an era of intense competition between the U.S. and Soviet space programs.

Rutan, who built the Voyager aircraft that was flown around the world on one tank of fuel in 1986, said his team was ready to fly three times during the two-week period, in case the “first flight falls short.”

Twenty-six teams in seven countries are vying for the prize, but Rutan is the first to set a launch date for this year. Ansari X is modeled after the Orteig Prize, which in the 1920s offered $25,000 to the first person to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. Charles Lindbergh won the prize with his nonstop flight over the Atlantic in 1927.

SpaceShipOne, the only X Prize entrant to have made test flights, has been funded by billionaire Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp.

A Canadian team is not far behind, according to X Prize officials. Brian Feeney, head of the da Vinci Project, said he would unveil a rocket next week, with the goal of launching it this fall from a high-altitude balloon over Kindersley, Saskatchewan.

Feeney declined to specify a launch date but said he still had two days to notify X Prize officials. Teams must provide 60 days’ notice before making the flights.

“We’re in the hunt,” Feeney said. “It’s never over until it’s over.”