The Race To Space–Like A Virgin: Aeronautic genius Burt Rutan is going to send his Buck Rogers-style Little Space Ship That Could back into the ether tomorrow. It will be SpaceShipOne‘s second launch, and the first leg of its two-leg bid to win the Ansari X prize, which will drop $10 million into the pocket of the first team to get a privately built spacecraft into suborbital space (100 kilometers up, or about 62 miles for all you metric-challenged Luddites) and back. Twice. Within a period of two weeks. The second launch, if the first doesn’t end in a fiery ball or a smoking crater, will take place October 4 (the anniversary of the launch of the first satellite–Sputnik). Rutan’s project is backed by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who has sunk more than $20 million into the Quixotic quest. But Allen could be getting more than the 10 mil back if Rutan pulls this thing off. Hirsute business honcho Richard Branson, a first-order Wetass, has inked a deal to develop SpaceShipOne as the world’s first commercial suborbital space ride. Here’s what the ever-quotable Branson, who eventually plans an orbital hotel, had to say: “As Richard Branson Astronaut rather than Richard Branson entrepreneur, my wife will find me even harder to live with.” And here’s how the over-caffeinated, possibly shrooming, marketing suits at “Virgin Galactic” envision the ride:
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…..the VSS Enterprise, your spaceship, is released from the mother ship. Almost immediately, as your astronaut pilot ignites the engine, you will hear the roar of the rocket behind you as the enormous power accelerates you at 4G to a speed faster than a bullet.
All the time, the ergonomic design of the seats will keep you comfortable.
As you hurtle through the edges of the atmosphere, through the panoramic individual windows you will be able to see the cobalt blue sky turn to mauve and indigo and finally black. Out will come the stars, clear and bright… even though it is daytime!
Soon the rocket motor cuts out. Now, from the rush of adrenalin and the rocket motor, everything is quiet.
You are weightless…
You are in space!
The ship will manoeuvre, so you can look for the first time back at the planet you have just come from. The view will be over a thousand miles in any direction. That’s like seeing North Africa if you were in a spaceship above London or Miami from overhead Washington DC. You will see the clarity of the solar system and the harshness of the sun.
It will be humbling. It will be spiritual.
It will be very, very expensive. How expensive? Try $198,000 a shot. But that’s a deal compared to the $20 million the Russians extort from attention-needy American businessmen and fading boy band idols. And I guarantee the Virgin inflight service will be far superior…
Space Cowboy Branson: “With this deal I can now reveal the secret I have been keeping all my life. I am, in fact, a Ferengi…”
The Earthist Chronicles 