First commercial spaceship heads for the final frontier
In a giant leap for the space industry, the first commercial manned spacecraftwill be launched on Monday in the Mojave desert in the US. If successful, it could bea first steptowards commercial space tourism.
The spacecraft will be competing for the Ansari X Prize, a $10m prize intended to promote affordable commercial human space flight. It is modelled on the $25,000 prize that motivated Charles Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight in 1927. Within two years, the number of people flying on aeroplanes increased almost 40-fold.
Donors to the prize, which was first offered in 1997 to any group capable of achieving private human space flight, include the first space tourist Dennis Tito, who in 2001 hitched a ride on a Russian spaceship to the International Space Station for $20m and former astronaut and US senator John Glenn.
The rocket plane may fulfil some of its goals before it even gets off the ground, by whipping up interest in commercial space flight. Up to 250,000 people are expected to descend on this remote area 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, leading some to dub the event the "Woodstock" of space enthusiasts.
"The idea of a new race to space, this time in the private sector, has turned this into something of a spectator sport," says Eric Anderson, president of the space tourism group Space Adventures.
The event's organisers are unabashedly promoting the flight to a different kind of space tourist - the type that stays on the ground.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, sole sponsor of the SpaceShipOne experimental craft which will fly on Monday, has approved a logo for T-shirts, hats, mugs and water bottles to be sold at the event. Restaurants are also cashing in. At the Voyager Restaurant, diners may order a "SpaceShipOne" (ham and eggs), or a "White Knight" (bacon and eggs), a dish named after the rocket's carrier craft.
As there are no hotels in this part of the desert, one of the competition web sites lists motels and inns in the area, with telephone numbers for reservations. If they are sold out, as reports suggest, campers might try for one of the 440 spots reserved for them at the Mojave Airport.
Planners have scheduled the launch for early morning, so there will be less wind and so that viewers on the ground will not have to squint into the sun. For those who cannot make it, the creator of SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan, has signed on with the Discovery Channel and Allen's Vulcan Productions to produce a television special on the flight.
Twenty-four groups will compete for the prize, among them one led by John Carmack, who made his fortune on the computer games "Doom" and "Quake". To win, competitors must launch a person to the edge of space and return them safely to Earth twice within a two-week period.
Favourite to win the prize is Scaled Composites, which designed SpaceShipOne. Last month, the craft reached a height of 40 miles, the highest altitude ever reached in a non-government aerospace programme.
On Monday, the rocket's pilot - still to be named - will attempt to achieve an altitude of 62 miles. At that point, the pilot would become an astronaut, as he or she would reach the sub-regions of space and experience weightlessness for more than three minutes, according to the rocket's designers. The entire flight should last about 25 minutes once SpaceShipOne has been released from the White Knight carrier craft.
Peter Diamandis, chief executive of the X Prize organisation, said the competition aimed to make space travel as popular as the "barnstormers" of the 1920s. "It's going back to the days when a World War I pilot would land in a field somewhere and ask people if they wanted to pay for the ride of a lifetime," says Diamandis. "It's fun!" He points to surveys from Futron, an aerospace forecasting company, showing there are about 13,000 people in the US alone willing to spend $100,000 to fly into space. That number is expected to rise sharply if the commercial sector can get the price down to $25,000 per flight. This is expected to happen within the next decade.
Mojave Airport has already applied for a licence to become the first certified inland "spaceport". If it succeeds, space tourists may train and await their launch at specially built facilities.
The airport had to promise to check the runway for endangered desert tortoises prior to any space flights. With space tourists reaching a top speed of Mach 3, the tortoises would have a hard time getting out of the way.
首架商业飞船飞向最后疆界
首架商业载人飞船将于周一在美国莫哈韦沙漠发射升空，这是航天业的一次巨大飞跃。如果发射成功，就可能成为向商业太空旅游迈出的第一步。
这艘飞船将竞争“安萨里X”大奖(Ansari X Prize)。这是一个1000万美元的奖项，旨在促进人们负担得起的商业载人太空飞行。“安萨里X”大奖模仿了从前一个2.5万美元的奖项，那个奖项激励查尔斯?林德伯格(Charles Lindbergh)在1927年完成了人类首次跨大西洋飞行。两年之内，乘飞机飞行的人数增加了近40倍。
“安萨里X”奖于1997年首次设立，面向任何能实现私人人类太空飞行的团体。该奖项的捐资者包括首位太空旅行者丹尼斯?蒂托(Dennis Tito)，以及前宇航员、美国参议员约翰?格伦(John Glenn)。2001年，蒂托支付2000万美元，搭乘一艘俄罗斯飞船到达了国际空间站。
这艘火箭飞机(rocket plane)可能会激起人们对商业太空飞行的兴趣，因此甚至在它飞离地面之前，就可以实现自己的一些目标。预计届时将有多达25万人光临这片位于洛杉矶东北方100英里的偏远地区，因此有人将这一事件称为太空爱好者的“伍德斯托克音乐节”。
“在私人领域进行一场太空新竞赛这一想法已把此事变得像是体育盛会，”太空旅游团体“太空冒险”(Space Adventures)的总裁埃里克?安德松(Eric Anderson)说道。
这一活动的组织者正在竭力向另一种太空旅行者宣传这次飞行，即留在地面上的太空旅行者。
保罗?艾伦(Paul Allen)是微软(Microsoft)的联合创始人，也是这艘将于周一升空的“飞船一号”实验飞行器的唯一赞助人。他已同意把一个标识用在届时将发售的T恤衫、帽子、杯子和水瓶上。一些餐馆也将从中赚钱。在“旅行者餐馆”(Voyager Restaurant)，就餐者可以点一份“飞船一号”(火腿蛋)，或者来一份“白骑士”（咸肉鸡蛋），这是以该火箭运载飞机命名的菜。
由于这片沙漠地区没有旅馆，因此一家大赛网站列出了这个区域的汽车旅馆和乡村客栈，并附上预定电话。报告建议说，如果这些旅馆订满了，野营者可以尝试前往莫哈韦机场为他们保留的440个扎营地。
组织机构将飞船发射安排在凌晨，这样风会比较小，地面上的观众也不用在阳光下眯起眼睛。至于那些不能赶到现场的人，飞船一号的设计师伯特?鲁坦(Burt Rutan)已与探索频道(Discovery Channel)以及艾伦的Vulcan制作公司签约，将制作一个有关此次飞行的电视专辑。
24个小组将参与“安萨里X”奖角逐，其中一个小组由约翰?卡马克(John Carmack)领导。卡马克靠电脑游戏“毁灭战士(Doom)和“雷神之锤”(Quake)发了财。要想获胜，竞争者必须在两周内两次将一个人送入太空边缘，然后安全送回地球。
最有望赢得大奖的是Scaled Composites公司，正是该公司设计了“飞船一号”。上月，“飞船一号”飞到了40英里的高度，这是非政府航天计划中迄今达到的最高高度。
周一，火箭的飞行员（人选未定）将尝试到达62英里的高度。据该火箭的设计者称，在那个高度，飞行员就将成为宇航员，因为他/她到达了准太空区域，并将经历三分钟以上的失重。一旦“飞船一号”脱离运载飞机“白骑士”，整个飞行应该持续约25分钟。
“安萨里X”奖组织的首席执行官彼得?迪亚芒蒂(Peter Diamandis)表示，这场竞争旨在让太空旅行变得像上世纪20年代的《飞行旅游者》(barnstormers)那样风靡。“就像回到了第一次世界大战时期，一名飞行员在某地的田里降落，问人们是否想要付钱进行终生难忘的旅行，”迪亚芒蒂说道。“这很有趣！”他指出，航天预测公司Futron的调查显示，单是在美国就有约1.3万人愿意花10万美元飞上太空。如果商业领域能把价格降到每次飞行2.5万美元，预计愿意飞行的人数将急剧上升。预计这在未来10年内就能实现。
莫哈韦机场已经申请执照，要成为首家持证的内陆“太空港”。如果该机场获得成功，太空游客就可以在特殊建造的设施内进行训练，然后等待升空。
该机场必须保证，在任何太空飞行前，检查跑道上是否有濒危的沙漠龟。当太空旅行者达到三马赫的最高速度时，沙漠龟就很难爬开。
