The personal spaceflight revolution is
headed for a liftoff this October in New
Mexico.
Officials of the X Prize Cup announced
today in Las Cruces, New
Mexico that a roster of rocket activities will take to the air October
4-9 at various locations in Southern New Mexico, including Las
Cruces and Alamogordo.
Last April, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
declared the October dates as X Prize Cup Week in New Mexico. He noted that it would be a week-long
showcasing of personal spaceflight projects, test-flight activities,
educational outreach, as well as aircraft fly-ins and tributes to the history
of the state's unique role in space exploration.
Now onboard and ready to show their wares
at the upcoming Countdown to the X Prize Cup are such entrepreneurial rocket
groups as: Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Starchaser Industries, The da
Vinci Project, TGV Rockets, as well as organizations that will blast off
numbers of homebuilt rockets.
The Countdown to the X Prize Cup is prelude
to a yearly event designed to spotlight the emerging personal spaceflight
business, said Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman of the X Prize Foundation.
Multitude of vehicles
Last year, Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led
by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, built and flew the world's first private
spacecraft - SpaceShipOne -- to the edge of space. Thanks to back-to-back
flights of the piloted rocket plane, the Mojave, California-based group snagged
the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
"It isn't enough for the industry that
we're all passionate about to just have a single vehicle," Diamandis said.
"It's critical to build an industry that has a multitude of vehicles that are
opening up the personal spaceflight industry," he said.
Diamandis said that the vision is for the
public to come to an X Prize Cup in the next few years and witness for
themselves over the course of four or five days as many as 50 flights to space.
"That's the vision...that's the goal," he said.
"This is your spaceflight program. Our goal
is to grow to an event that does bring tens of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of people," Diamandis said.
Fingers-in-the-ears event
Several officials from groups taking part
in the October festivities said they were drawing closer to flights of their
respective vehicles.
"We're looking to launch our first rocket
into space in October next year," said Steve Bennett, head of Starchaser Industries.
At this year's event, the Bennett's Starchaser group is going to fire up a booster engine. And it is sure to be a
fingers-in-the-ears event.
"This thing kicks out something like
three-tons of thrust," Bennett said. "We're looking at a flame of about 80 feet
long...lots of fire and smoke."
Ready to fly
Brian Feeney, team leader of the Canada-based da
Vinci Project, said "sometime in the summer of 2006 we'll be launching our
first manned flights to space." The da Vinci Project is displaying associated
launch hardware at the Countdown to the X Prize Cup.
Jay Edwards of Rocketplane Limited of Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma said
they are bringing a mockup of their suborbital vehicle. They expect to start a flight test program of their craft in
October of next year, with passenger flights to start in January-February 2007,
he said.
Also on hand at today's press briefing was
Russ Blink of Armadillo Aerospace. The group has committed to doing demo flights at
the Countdown to the X Prize cup event this October.
"I'm one of the few people that have
actually ridden on one of the rockets that we've built," Blink reported, but
quickly added: "I went three feet in the air...but I did come down safely. I'm
putting that under my belt and I'm ready to fly up into space."
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