PHOENIX, AZ -- If you're in the market for radically cheaper access to space, you may not have to wait too long.

With the recent unveiling of Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne, entrepreneurial efforts to crack the commercial human spaceflight market are moving ahead full-throttle. Along with that project, many private rocketeers are eager to break the technical and bureaucratic bonds that hold back low-cost, reusable space transportation.

"There's a dawning realization that has come over a lot of us. It's up to us if things are going to get done at all and anytime soon," said Henry Vanderbilt, Executive Director of the Space Access Society. Vanderbilt was speaking at the Space Access '03 conference, held here April 24-26.

In large measure, those attending Space Access '03 have given up on NASA. The agency has chained itself to flying for decades more an ultra-expensive and cumbersome B-52 of space - the space shuttle. NASA is also concentrating on an Orbital Space Plane taxi service to the International Space Station.

Additionally, the established major aerospace companies remain largely a non-factor for now, Vanderbilt contends. "They continue their pattern of investing only in what existing large customers will pay them to invest in. This remains a strategy unlikely to produce revolutionary access cost reductions, in our view."

That leaves the U.S. Department of Defense. They show signs of getting serious about improved space access. Steps may be afoot toward radically cheaper, high flight-rate space access. "We await developments with interest," Vanderbilt said.

"You have to really want to be in this business," Vanderbilt told SPACE.com. "For the amount of brains and energy you put into this, there are a lot of fields where you can make a whole lot better money. This is a low reward field for the moment. Long term, that may change," he said.

"Somebody out there has a good chance to be the Boeing of the 21^st century. And it's probably not going to be Boeing," Vanderbilt said.

Among a budding crop of private rocketeers is XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, California.

XCOR's Aleta Jackson said the company has adopted a straightforward -- and straight up -- philosophy. "Take something cheap and reliable and increase its performance until we get to orbit," she said.

For example, the firm is making headway on its Xerus project, designed to handle suborbital space tourist flights. The firm recently completed a series of test firings of their new liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine, the XR-4K5, a powerful propulsion system for the Xerus.

A joint marketing agreement has been struck between XCOR Aerospace and Space Adventures, Ltd., providing Space Adventures the first 600 flights of Xerus to 62 miles (100 km) altitude. Ticket price for a back seat passenger: $98,000.

Building upon their work on the EZ-Rocket - a souped-up experimental aircraft shoved through the sky via reusable rocket engine -- XCOR is marching toward a trio of space markets, said Dan DeLong, XCOR's Chief Engineer.

DeLong said the credibility of suborbital passenger traffic has yet to be proven. But two other markets appear solid.

For one, Xerus could haul experiments on parabolic trajectories to gain several minutes of quality microgravity. Another market is using the vehicle as a launch platform. Something akin to a "luggage rack" would be fastened to the space plane. At altitude, a micro-satellite could be tossed into orbit from Xerus making use of an upper stage motor, DeLong explained.

"We like wings. We like a runway takeoff," DeLong said. XCOR's EZ-Rocket is an operations demonstrator, he said, showing that piloted, reusable rocket-powered vehicles really can fly, fly safe, and fly frequently.

"We are working small and then bigger because that's what we can do. Only time will tell if that philosophy is valid or not," DeLong said.

Brian Walker of Bend, Oregon is a successful toy inventor and is bankrolling an effort hailed as Rapid Up Super High, or simply, Project RUSH.

For "Rocket Guy" Walker, the top goal is to ride his homebuilt, single-seat vehicle up 50 miles (80 kilometers) and come back down. There are no plans for roaring into Earth orbit, just a personal passion to fulfill a childhood dream, he said.

"The most important part is to have fun," Walker said.

On his 13-acre private space camp compound, Walker has masterminded his rocket designs, launch infrastructure, as well as a centrifuge that's already whipped up nine times Earth's gravity. "It hauls. It just screams," he noted.

"I can still smoke a cigar and drink a martini at six g's. When I can do that at eight g's, I'm ready to go! I don't plan on doing that in the rocket, but I can do it in the centrifuge," Walker said.

Rocket Guy has already purchased a Russian Soyuz space suit for travel purposes.

Borrowing from one of his toy pop-up rocket products, Walker is taking an assisted air launch approach to ascend the heavens. The entire rocket would first be sent skyward in a whoosh of compressed air. This pneumatic catapult system -- akin to a circus cannon -- would speed the rocket to several hundred miles per hour, lofting it a few thousand feet.

From there, the craft's onboard propulsion gear kicks in fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide. En route to maximum altitude, sets of rocket fins would be shed. "It's a big, fun toy," Walker said.

A sub-scale prototype of Walker's ultimate dream machine is under fabrication. In this way, a track record of safety can be achieved, he said, while upping the height reached in bit by bit ballistics.

"I feel really good about the fact that I'm funding this project. There is no sponsor or investors. I don't have anybody pulling my chain telling me what to do or where to go," Walker said. "I figure if I survive this thing…I can just about do anything I want. If I don't survive it, I don't have to pay taxes anymore. So it's a win-win situation," he concluded.

The Space Access Society confab serves as a watering hole to savor present-day technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper access to space. No doubt, there are those here anxious to become a "rocketfeller" of the 21^st century.

"The fact of the matter is that the future of opening up space really is this community of people. I for one gave up on the government 10 years ago," said Peter Diamandis, President of the X Prize Foundation, based in St. Louis, Missouri.

"In this community we've got to talk about the willingness for us to take risks for something we believe in. Not stupid risks; not uncalculated risk, but risk nonetheless…because this is a frontier we're opening," Diamandis declared.

"This is a risky activity. People may die in the process. But it is a risk worth taking," Diamandis said.

The X Prize is a $10 million cash purse that will be awarded to the first team that successfully launches three people to an altitude of 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) returns them safely to Earth and then repeats that feat with the same vehicle within two weeks.

Diamandis said 24 teams from 7 nations are presently vying for the $10 million X Prize.

The money is locked up as an insurance policy, but the clock is ticking. The policy expires January 1, 2005. "They may regret having taken the bet," Diamandis added.

Even with the unveiling last month of Rutan's SpaceShipOne Project, Diamandis said it's still a race. "I do think that there are at least two or three teams that will give Rutan a run for the money," he said.

One of those groups eyeing the X Prize cash is Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas. This small band of renegade builders has focused on computer-controlled hydrogen peroxide-powered rocket vehicles.

The money pump behind Armadillo is John Carmack, a computer game guru of such products as Quake and Doom.

If hardware and testing come together, the group's full-sized X Prize craft might be airborne by year's end, Carmack said. Rigorous hardware and electronic component shakeout, however, may mean X Prize flights by mid-2004. "Overall, the system is the simplest we think that can do the job to win the X Prize," he said.

For some two-and-a-half years, Carmack and his team members have doggedly pursued key hardware and spaceship designs. To date, things have worked. Things have crashed.

Carmack's group sells "highly collectible" rocket debris to raise a little side money. Called Armadillo Droppings, for $125 you too can own bits and pieces of history by purchasing a bag of assorted curious gizmos and scrap taken right off of "decommissioned" Armadillo Aerospace rockets.

"If we win or don't win X Prize, we are going to build another vehicle. We look at this as iterative learning," Carmack told the audience. "We fully expect to crash and demolish one of these vehicles on the way to the X Prize," he said.

Carmack said that nearly $500,000 has been spent so far, with an additional $600,000 expected to be shelled out this year. At that point, the X Prize rocket will be flying, he said.

Armadillo's work schedule, at present, is being impacted by a propellant shortage. Hydrogen peroxide vendors have proven troublesome, some wary of liability issues or unable to supply or transport large quantities of the liquid required -- some 1,000 gallons to rocket up to X Prize altitude.

A windowless, passenger-toting nose section is being tested. The pressurized cabin of Armadillo's X Prize spaceship would hold one rider -- wearing no spacesuit -- with ballast used in place of two other commuters.

Buckled in, the pilot would back into space, quite literally. That is, the person's back faces into the nose cone. In what's tagged as "eyeballs out" acceleration, the g-forces on the pilot during liftoff would be modest, Carmack said.

Hurled onto a suborbital trajectory, the vehicle would reenter and reach terra firma in a nose-down position. The front section of the cone dissipates touchdown forces by being crushable.

As for Rutan as an X Prize competitor, Carmack said he's not intimidated.

"We think he's got a workable plan. He's got many times the experience and resources that we're putting into this. But I think that he's made the problem many times as hard," Carmack said. "Simplicity is our absolute important issue," he said.

Private spaceships remain a work in progress. Yet there's both real work underway and progress is clearly being made.

Admittedly, however, a host of wanna-be private space groups have already flatlined before flight.

"There have been false dawns in the history of this emerging sector," said Jeff Greason, President of XCOR Aerospace.

"A lot of the progress that's being made is being made really on the cheap," Greason said. "Some of the companies have learned to tighten their belts very tight…but still keep moving," he told SPACE.com.

Greason said things are truly starting to roll.

"Flying something is no longer exceptional in and of itself. Flying something is merely what you are assumed to have to be doing if you are a serious player. And that is a wonderful change in expectations for the better," Greason said.

The foundations are on much firmer ground this time around, Greason said.

"The success stories I see are those people who are willing to take it slow. They are taking it step-by-step. They're not getting too far ahead of themselves," said Rand Simberg, President of Interglobal Space Lines, Inc., based in Jackson, Wyoming.

Simberg said the single biggest problem still to be faced is the regulatory situation. That means regulating private reusable space launch developers without squelching creativity.

There are a diversity of ways to access space, Simberg said. "Nobody is smart enough to know what the right way is."