The Scaled Composite company won the X-Prize, and went down in history as the first private company to launch a spacecraft into space. Here is a summary of recent events.
Dikla Oren
In the picture above: Spaceship 1 on its way to space. Below: Pilot Brian Binney. Credit: Ansari X Fries
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Yesterday afternoon according to Israel time, the private spaceship Spaceship 1 took off, and together with it, the space tourism branch took off. Her successful flight earned her the title of winner of the X-Prize, which is accompanied by ten million dollars. More importantly, the flight of the private spacecraft paves the way for the development of the space industry at an increased rate and the lowering of the costs of space operations.
A little history
So what exactly is that x-price? The Ansari X-Prize is a ten million dollar prize, promised to the first private company to design, build and fly a spacecraft into space. The rules are simple. The space limit is set at about a hundred kilometers above the ground, and the company must repeat the operation twice within two weeks, with a pilot and two other people present on each flight or a pilot and a weight equivalent to two people.
The competition excited (and still excites) space enthusiasts around the world. Various groups submitted applications, including the "Da Vinci Project" group, which will launch its spacecraft in the coming days, and a group from the "Scaleed Composite" company, whose spacecraft is called Spaceship 1. Remember this name. You will hear him a lot more.
History is full of competitions, which offered a monetary reward to the performers of challenging tasks and contributed to the advancement of various fields. Perhaps the most notable example occurred a little less than a century ago in 1919, when Raymond Ortigue offered a prize of $25,000, a considerable sum by all accounts at the time, to the first person to fly from New York to Paris without a stopover. The claimant for the award was Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 made this flight. As we know, the aeronautics industry has developed at an incredible pace in the last century, and intercontinental flights have become an integral part of most of our lives. Based on the same idea, the operators of the X-Prize competition hoped to encourage private groups to successfully fly into space by providing a small incentive.
What have we had so far?
So far, one company, Scaled Composites, has managed to touch the space. After several test flights to an altitude of several tens of kilometers during the year, on the twenty-first of June the Spaceship 1 spacecraft made history. It was the first private flight into space. The spaceship hitched a ride on a special plane, called the "White Knight". The plane gave her a boost, and 62-year-old test pilot Mike Melville flew her to a height of just over a hundred kilometers above the ground and back.
The spacecraft returned safely, and Melville became the first astronaut to receive his astronaut wings privately. However, the head of Scaled Composites, Brett Rutten, chose not to fly again immediately and try to sue the X-Frise, because during the flight a problem was discovered that Melville overcame.
The company worked on correcting the problem, and another flight date was set for September twenty-ninth. Indeed, a week ago the second space flight took place. This time too, Melville played the role of pilot. The spaceship was a success, although a second unexpected problem arose, which Melville also overcame. "It was fun," was his catchphrase.
Get the winner…
To win the X-Prize, remember, you have to fly twice in less than two weeks, so a third flight was scheduled for yesterday, the fourth of October, the anniversary of the first flight from London to New York in 1957 and the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1958. A busy date, to which another event in the field of aviation will now be added - Winning the X Prize.
In yesterday's flight, the spacecraft was flown by the 51-year-old test pilot, Brian Binney. The flight went smoothly without incident, and Spaceship 1 reached the required altitude and returned safely. After repeated checks of the height the spacecraft reached, the organizers of the competition announced that we have a winner.
What an achievement, what an achievement
Flying into space and returning safely (especially the part of returning safely) is not a simple matter at all. Any tiny mistake could end in failure, or worse, disaster. In order to succeed, great efforts are needed in the areas of planning and execution. Once again the human skills and ingenuity are revealed, interwoven with a boundless enthusiasm to reach space.
The successful flights of Spaceship 1 and the planned flights of other groups show that flying into space is definitely within the reach of a private company, both in terms of developing and building the hardware, and financially.
Why do we even need private flights to space?
The goal of X-Frise was clear: promoting the space industry and making it accessible to the general public. Today, space flight is the exclusive domain of a small group of astronauts and individual billionaires. Dreamers, however, are many.
Until now, space belonged only to government companies such as NASA and the European Space Agency. The contribution and importance of these are not in doubt, as they raise extremely complicated and expensive operations. Whether it is landings on foreign lands, sending spacecraft to the solar system or launching satellites, the government agencies promote the field of space and its exploration.
However, a little competition and plenty of new ideas from all the engineers and space enthusiasts everywhere can't hurt. Apart from this, criticism is often heard about the high costs of space operations. The entry of the private companies into the business will greatly reduce the costs, since private companies usually do not enjoy budgets of billions.
It is difficult to describe the excitement and joy caused by the success of the spacecraft. There is no doubt that the successful flight caused waves of enthusiasm and happiness around the world. After all, it's not every day you get a private space flight. Or yes? So that's it, for now a private flight into space is a pretty rare event, but the whole idea of launching spacecraft privately is to make access to space more open and increase the frequency of launch events.
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Winning the X-Prize is not going to loosen the hands of the other teams. Each of them invests their soul in the construction of a spacecraft, and in any case, each private company that succeeds in the mission is guaranteed different contracts. The "Da Vinci Project" group, which is in advanced stages, announced that the win will not prevent it from trying to reach space.
As for Spaceship 1, interest in the spacecraft has already begun. The founder and owner of Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson, is a friend of Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, with the aim of making space tourism a real thing. The two will establish the company "Virgin Galactic", a space tourism company that will offer the general public commercial flights in spacecraft similar to Spaceship 1. A ticket will cost about two hundred thousand dollars, a hundred times less than the current price of a space adventure. According to the plan, by 2007 there will be commercial flights into space.
Also, the commercialization does not miss the success, and there are solutions for those whose hand is not able to pay such an amount. The company that produces the drink 7up, the official drink of the X-Free competition, launched an innovative promotion - a free flight ticket to space.
The ten million dollars of the X-Prize was awarded a long time ago, but don't worry. Billionaire Robert Bigelow announced a new award last week. The prize is fifty million dollars, and it will be awarded to the first private company to build a passenger spacecraft to orbit the Earth. Space enthusiasts, here is your next challenge.
So what did we learn?
The flights of Spaceship 1 were above all an amazing achievement, which symbolizes the beauty of enthusiasm. We live in an exciting era, where companies are starting to offer flight tickets to space as promotions. We all hope that the success will encourage more companies to take part in the space industry and make it flourish. Most of all, the hope that all the enthusiasm will bring space closer to more people and make it the commons inspires more generations of space enthusiasts. Who knows, maybe soon some of the science fiction will become reality, and we will fly on adventurous trips in the deserts of Mars, or at least for some vacation at the Grenadier Hotel on a moon of Jupiter.
Until then, we wish success to all the companies working on the advancement of space industry and research.
X Fries
Scaled Composite
A review of X-freeze on behalf of Nature
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Coverage on Space.com
Yedan x Fries
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