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Best of ExplorersWeb 2004 Awards: Spaceship One

Dec 27, 2004 18: 55 EST
ExplorersWeb has been awarded best of adventure by National Geographic and best of the web by Forbes magazine. What is then the Best of ExplorersWeb?

We have covered hundreds of expeditions in 2004. It's difficult to choose the best, as they all contributed in their own way, sharing their story - their very soul in fact - with us and the world.

And yet, there are those who continue to linger in our minds long after their final debrief. We have chosen 8 expeditions who have contributed in an extraordinary way to the Spirit of Adventure in the year of 2004.

Today number 5: Spaceship One

Spectators lining the runway cheered and shouted, "Go! Go! Go!" Then it went silent. "This was not planned for" mumbled Burt Rutan as he watched SpaceShipOne go in a roll. For some sixty seconds, all eyes were glued to the sky: 10-20-30-40 spins - inside the space craft Mike Melvill, the pilot, was in trouble: "I got a surprise. The ship really spun up."

As the roll came under control, the ship continued to climb. At 11.13 EST, around 4 minutes after the launch at 11.09 AM EST, SpaceShipOne reached 337,000 feet, well past the required prize altitude of 100 kilometers. Upon its re-entry into the atmosphere several minutes later, a deep sonic boom rolled across the desert floor.

"If it happened on the shuttle we would be looking for small pieces"

September 29, SpaceShipOne made the first successful attempt for the $10 million XPrize given to the first privately financed team who could make two successful manned space flights in a craft able to carry three people. The ship came down in good shape after a terrifying 60 second spin of around 40 rolls straight after the launch from the carrier rocket White Knight, upon leaving the atmosphere.

Seat belt on, still in vertical trajectory, Mike regained control of the ship, continued to space and came back enduring 5G on re-entrance. Just before landing, Mike did another roll - this one voluntary to signal mission accomplished.

"I think it looks good for the crowd to do a roll at the top of the climb," said Mike, when he climbed out. "If you have a high roll rate and you didn't plan to do it, that's normally a big deal," Rutan said. "If this happened on the shuttle it would be an accident. We would be out there looking for small pieces."

But would they dare to repeat?

"One down and one to go," said Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation. Although no one was sure what exactly had caused the spin: "Oh, I fumbled with the rudder, it happens at my age," said the pilot, 63. But would they dare to repeat? And within the time limit of 2 weeks?

They were ready already Monday morning, October 4th. Late into the night in Rutan's home in the Mojave desert, the SpaceShipOne gang first watched TV - a documentary on themselves airing on the Discovery Channel. A few hours later, they woke up, blurry eyed. As they stepped out on the desert runway, a golden morning dawned. It was a perfect day - for a perfect flight. It was also time to bag $10 million, and open a new route - to Space.

Brian Binnie, flew the second leg of the X Prize competition. A few hours and 368 000 feet later, on a press conference, Burt concluded: "The big guys, the Boeings, the Lockheeds and the naysaying people at Houston ... I think they are looking at each other now and saying, 'We're screwed."

Fixed mishaps in flight

The guys didn't have the government resources. But they had something else - a dream and a free spirit. After a failed test flight landing, they needed to adjust some aerodynamics. They could have used a wind tunnel for the tests. That would have cost them a few years and a few hundred grand. Instead, they mounted the wing on a pick-up truck, and raced it across the desert as fast as they could. 3 weeks later, they had all the data needed. The pilots had a courage of steel. They flew prototype planes and fixed mishaps in flight. Said Paul Allen (Microsoft) afterwards; "I've been involved a lot in technology, but this is truly remarkable."

A perfect planet

Yet the flight had nothing to do with 10 million dollars. Or to put tourists in 4 minute space rides. The flight was about something that most don't dare to dream, less even talk about. Once, America was built on this kind of pioneering spirit. Now, the same pioneers are entering space. They won't travel as nations. They'll arrive one by one, in ships built by their own hands. Some will come for gold and some for the adventure, but most in search - for the perfect planet.

The SpaceShipOne crew stays in our memory for their self reliance, pioneering and ingenuity.

By their performance, the awarded expeditions have proved themselves outstanding in all or most of the following:

- Courage
- Determination
- Persistence
- Self reliance
- Ingenuity
- Pioneering
- Idealism
- Comradeship
- Compassion
- Respect towards competition
- Honesty

8 expeditions have been chosen best in the world of adventure in 2004.

Previous in the countdown:

6. The Russian North Wall team (Mount Everest) for persistence, pioneering, courage and comradeship.
7. The Russian Extreme Project (Amin Brakk BASE jump) for pioneering, ingenuity and courage.
8. Fiona and Rosie (South Pole) for their record-breaking performance and respect for each other.

An additional 4 expeditions received a special mention award:

Edurne Pasaban and Juanito Oiarzabal (K2) - for their courage and honesty.
Henk De Velde (NW Passage) - for his battle to the bitter end.
Pavel Rezvoy (Ocean rowing) - for his power of will and refusal to retire.
Nawang Sherpa (Mount Everest) - for his determination and ground-breaking performance.

More on the crew:

"We are heading to orbit sooner than you think," Burt Rutan, the creator said earlier. "We do not intend to stay in low-earth orbit for decades. The next 25 years will be a wild ride. ... One that history will note was done for the benefit of everyone."

Rutan said he expects the flight of SpaceShipOne to have an effect comparable to a set of public demonstrations that the Wright brothers carried out in Paris in 1908.

The reason, Rutan said, is because those demonstrations showed people "that's something I can do, because a couple of bicycle shop guys can do it". In the same way, he said, this low-cost flight into space will lead people to realize that "hey, this is something for us to do now; this is not just for governments". But, he also said, it will take risk-taking adventurers to get there, a new generation of 'superheroes'.

Rutan suggests the following timeline:

3-4 years: The first commercial space travel
5 years: 3,000 astronauts
15 years: 50,000 astronauts, space hotels
By 2050, space lines so common that passengers "will be bored looking out of a suborbital space flight as we do on an airliner," he says.

When he fills jobs, Rutan says he doesn't look at classroom grades, but rather for fire in the eyes of his hires. He expects his designers to hold their own on the workshop floor, where designs become real.
He wants employees who don't mind "sweating like hell." Quit college early, he says, "I prefer your mind not being poisoned with all this garbage." But don't fear failure: "I encourage my people to fail because if they're not failing, they're not going to have a breakthrough."

And finally about NASA: "There has only been risk-adverse, 'don't-try-tha' attitudes, I'm not sure NASA is going to be a relevant player in suborbital space access."

The nonprofit X Prize Foundation was sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen invested more than $20 million in Scaled Composites to create the manned program -- a fraction of what government-sponsored efforts have cost.

The craft embodied several innovations, including a unique hybrid rocket motor, a new method of re-entering the atmosphere that requires no active controls, and the first operational space vehicle made entirely of carbon composite rather than metal.

It was a tough choice among four experienced test pilots: Brian Binnie, Mike Melvill, Doug Shane, and Pete Siebold. Of that group, Mike Melvill has chalked up the most time behind the controls of SpaceShipOne, counting captive flights, freefall glides and the last powered flight of the craft. He has worked for Burt Rutan for over 26 years and has some 24 years of experience as an experimental test pilot.

Images and video courtesy of the team, Discovery, Ansari X-Prize, Popularmechanics.com.

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