The first commercial space aircraft designer visits Dublin to talk about plans for tourist flights into space, writes Dick Ahlstrom
Interest in a game of golf has helped to bring one of the world's great technical innovators on a speaking visit to Ireland. While here next week, Burt Rutan will tell his Irish audience about creativity and development and about how he built the world's first commercial space aircraft.
CEO of Sealed Composites based in California, Rutan designed and built SpaceShipOne, a rocket aircraft that has flown three times above 100km to the fringes of space.
Now Rutan is to design the world's first commercial space planes for Virgin Galactic, the company set up by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson to fly tourists into space.
Rutan is one of a number of innovators taking part in "Innovation Island II", a networking forum that hopes to bring together the likes of Rutan and those trying to make Ireland a centre of excellence for research and development.
Ibec's Irish Medical Devices Association has organised the event with main sponsor Fás. It takes place next Wednesday and Thursday, May 4th and 5th. Speakers with Rutan will include Thomas Fogarty who revolutionised vascular surgery and introduced the first therapeutic balloon catheter, entrepreneur Ravi Govindan, innovation expert Charles Handy and medical innovators including Dr Mary Russell and Prof Harry McKellop among others.
Rutan's participation came down, at least in part, to his and his wife's love of golf. He gets 50 speaker invitations a week. "Obviously I pick only a few of them," he said speaking from California. Happily Ireland has a reputation for golf, but Rutan also views the event as important for innovation here. "I think this will be a good audience."
His presentation will fit in with the overall themes of the event. "The talk will be about innovation and creativity and tying that to discoveries that can lead to progress and new products as being a good thing."
The story he will tell is a fascinating one. More than a decade ago he did conceptual sketches for a reusable space aircraft, looking at "what it would take to fly out of the atmosphere. I was interested as a developer of 39 new airplane types. I always wanted to look at something with high performance."
Then in 1996 the X-Prize, later renamed the Ansari X-Prize, was announced. It promised a $10 million award to any private company that could build and fly a reusable space aircraft above 100km twice within two weeks. The goal of the prize was to accelerate the drive towards commercial space flight for civilians.
Rutan announced his company would go after the Ansari X-Prize because of his belief that space represented the next frontier for commercial aviation. "What we see coming up is a new personal space flight industry," he says. "It wasn't done just to win the prize but to focus on the safety issues that will lead to a new industry."
It won't be long before we begin to see "resort hotels in orbit", he states. "I would like to see a civilian trip to the moon in my lifetime."
Civilian flights into space are coming he believes, and "sub-orbital space flight is a necessary step to prove safety". Yet space flight so far has proven to be a dangerous activity given four per cent of all those seeking to fly in space have died in the attempt. "That is a horrible safety record," he states. "It took me a long time before I got to the point where I had the solutions to the safety issues."
The move towards SpaceShipOne started in earnest when Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G Allen became involved. Rutan presented his proposals to Allen in 2000 and he agreed to become a key funder for the $20million development.
Rutan unveiled his civilian manned space programme in April 2003. Aside from the rocket plane it provided for a custom-made transporter, the "White Knight", to carry SpaceShipOne aloft to 14.3km before release. The rocket plane powers itself from this altitude up to the 100km target travelling at four times the speed of sound.
There were test flights later that year and into the next and on June 21, 2004 the craft made history as the first private enterprise manned mission to space, flying to 100km (62m) over the Mojave Desert in California.
The X-Prize was claimed by the team after two more flights on September 29th and then October 4th, 2004. The first flight reached almost 112.5km and the second climbed to 115km. Both beat the long-standing altitude record set by the military X-15 aircraft that reached 107.8km in August 1963.
Even before these flights Branson had announced plans to licence Rutan's technology for the space planes to be flown by Virgin Galactic. Rutan will roll out his design for the new space plane in about 18 months.
"It is very roomy, people will float about the cabin," he says. People will lie flat for re-entry, but it will take years before commercial travellers get a chance to fly, he believes. He was unwilling to venture a guess on when passengers will start to fly, but it won't be in less than five years.
And as for SpaceShipOne, this important piece of aviation history will not return to space. "It won't fly again," says Rutan. Rather it will be brought to the Air and Space museum in Washington DC, to go on display along side the Wright brothers' plane and the Mercury space capsule that initiated US-manned space flight. Rutan for his part will keep designing new aircraft. "We think what we do is fun."
• For more information on the two-day conference, see www.ibec.ie and click on IMDA Conference 2005