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Moon Advocates Say Private Rocket Flight Is Not Enough

LUNAR JOURNAL STAFF

NEW YORK / 16 JUNE / -- The head of a leading space advocacy group says that Monday's planned launch of the world's first commercial manned space vehicle is "exciting and interesting," but it isn't enough.

"I don't think that the average person on the street is going to be dazzled by something that is essentially a souped-up airplane," said David Ferrell Jackson, director of the Lunar Republic Society. "It really isn't going anywhere — let alone any place we haven't been already."

The New York-based Lunar Republic Society is advocating a private sector, entrepreneur-based program to explore, settle and develop the Moon by the end of this decade.

"What Burt Rutan, Paul Allen and SpaceShipOne will undoubtedly accomplish is exciting and interesting, but we've already been to Earth," Jackson said. "We're on course with a privatized program that will result in humans returning to the Moon and staying there, building communities and research facilities, by the end of this decade. Others are already looking beyond to Mars."

Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Elbert L. (Burt) Rutan have teamed to create the SpaceShipOne program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave Earth's atmosphere. Microsoft co-founder Allen is the sole sponsor of the project.

SpaceShipOne was designed by Rutan and his research team at California-based Scaled Composites. Rutan made aviation news in 1986 by developing the Voyager, the only aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without refueling.

The craft is expected to rocket 100 kilometers (62 miles) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. Sub-orbital space flight refers to a mission that flies out of the atmosphere but does not reach the speeds needed to sustain continuous orbiting of the Earth. The view from a sub-orbital flight is similar to being in orbit, but the cost and risks are far less.

"We've already got the capability — the launch vehicles, the facilities, the technology and the people needed to get it done — for a human-based mission to the Moon," Jackson said. "We can have a safe, sustainable private-sector space program that doesn’t waste taxpayer funds, while still providing results that benefit humans around this planet."

To reach space, a carrier aircraft, dubbed the "White Knight," will lift SpaceShipOne from the runway at Mojave. An hour later, after climbing to approximately 50,000 feet altitude just east of Mojave, the White Knight will release the spaceship into a glide. The spaceship pilot will then fire the rocket motor for about 80 seconds, reaching Mach 3 in a vertical climb. During the pull-up and climb, the pilot will encounter G-forces three to four times the gravity of the Earth.

SpaceShipOne is expected to coast up to a goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to Earth. The pilot will experience a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, will see the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon. The pilot will then configure the craft's wing and tail into a high-drag configuration to provide a "care-free" atmospheric entry by slowing the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and automatically aligning it along the flight path.

Upon re-entry, the pilot will reconfigure the ship back to a normal glider, and then spend 15 to 20 minutes gliding back to Earth, touching down like an airplane on the same runway from which he took off.

The planned June 21 flight will be flown solo by a yet-unnamed pilot, but SpaceShipOne is equipped with three seats and is designed for missions that include pilot and two passengers.

This report was compiled by Lunar Journal from staff and wire service reports.

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