Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S)

423 Pages·2011·5.21 MB·English

by  Chris Dubbs

List of Illustrations vii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii Prologue 1
i. The Entire Population of the Earth in Orbit 9
2. The Birth of Private Rocket Companies 32
3. Private Citizens Get Their Chance in Space 61
4. Russia Commercializes Space 87
5. Citizen Explorers 114
6. The Quest for a Reusable Spaceship 141
7. The Ansari X PRIZE Launches an Industry 167
8. Private Manned Spaceflight Makes History 192
9. Space Tourism Goes Mainstream 218
to. It Takes More Than a Spaceship to Build an Industry 243
Sources 269
Index 285
Following page 132
i. Gerard O'Neill with a photograph of the Bernal sphere z. Cutaway view of a
Stanford Torus
3. Fell Peters testing the nose cone of the Volksrocket 4. Atlas rocket vernier
engines
5. Robert Truax with his X-3
6. The Voskhod space crew
7 Christa McAuliffe on the KC-135
8. STS 51-D payload specialists
9. Bill Nelson preparing to eat a freshly peeled grapefruit to. The Soyuz TM-zo
space crew
it. Helen Sharman during a medical examination 12. Alexei Leonov seeing off
the Soyuz TM-za crew 13. Walt Anderson standing in front of a Soyuz
capsule 14. Negotiating the MirCorp lease
15. Dennis Tito, Talgat Musabayev, and Yuri Baturin, z8 April
zoos
16. Soyuz rocket
17. Anousheh Ansari
18. Eric Anderson and Richard Garriott 19. Gary Hudson next to
Rotary Rocket's Roton ATv
zo. Roton ATV on display
zi. Jeff Greason in front of xcOR's Ez-Rocket vehicle zz. Rick Searfoss in front
zi. Jeff Greason in front of xcOR's Ez-Rocket vehicle zz. Rick Searfoss in front
of the Ez-Rocket 23. Peter Diamandis and Bob Richards, September 2002
24. Rocket models Of X PRIZE competing teams 25. Brian Feeney at the 2005
X Cup
26. Burt Rutan with a model of SpaceShipOne 27. SpaceShipOne attached to
White Knight z8. Mission control at Scaled Composites 29. Mike Melvill riding
on top of SpaceShipOne 30. Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill in front of
SpaceShipOne 31. Ansari x PRIZE successful flight celebration 32. Per Wimmer
with models of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo
33. Sir Richard Branson standing beside SpaceShipOne, 2I June
zoo4
34. Sir Richard Branson with Burt Rutan during rollout of
WhiteKnightTwo
35. Elon Musk in front of Falcon 9 engines, 8 January zoo9
36. Spaceport America concept design
37. The Russian-Ukrainian-American launch team in front of the Dnepr
Space Head Module
38. Artist's conception of Bigelow Aerospace's first Orbital Space
Complex
39. Sir Richard Branson in front of WhiteKnightTwo 40. Sir Richard
Branson and Burt Rutan with VMS Eve and vss Enterprise, 6 December
zoo9
It begins. From before recorded history, people like you and me have dreamed of
journeying beyond the blue sky of Earth. We have dreamed of personal
spaceflights even to other worlds. Within these pages you will discover the
beginnings of those dreams coming true. This book is about the making of a new
industry, new perspectives for humankind, and a new human movement.
My place in these beginnings came by accident-almost. During my preteen
years in the 1950s, high-speed aviation, rockets, and space travel were constantly
in the news. More than just headliners, the stories represented the beginnings of
dreams come true-for a few. Chuck Yeager, Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and
the Mercury astronauts were some of the people I associated with wishes I
wanted to come true. They were real people doing and talking about real spacey
things on Tv and in the news.
While I imagined myself in the futures they were ushering in, there were other
personages already there: Tintin, Buck Rogers, Dan Dare, Tom Corbett, Flash
Gordon, Adam Strange, Tom Swift. I asked myself, could I be a part of these
things? Would they become real and let me go along with them? My head was
grounded just enough that I answered these questions with yes to the first and no
to the second.
Within a few years, as the first cosmonaut and astronaut rocketed beyond the
blue overhead, I focused on becoming a good aerospace engineer-good enough
to build and launch great rockets and far-traveling spaceships. I didn't allow
myself to consciously believe I could travel there, too. Flash Gordon I wasn't.
Like so much else in life, that belief would change.
My thinking was changed by events. The revolution that hit the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, in 1972, turned my head:
delay human exploration of other worlds to instead build a reusable Space
Transportation System. News reports said this would be a space shuttle to carry
cargo and people into orbit and back to Earth; that meant astronaut pilots flying
engineers and scientists. Working passengers going into space? Now, I could do
that! But how?
That question, it turns out, was on the minds of many people. The dream was
coming alive. Women and men in all walks of life were beginning to explore life
paths intent on becoming nonprofessional space travelers. Any student of history
could see that humankind's expansion into new realms continued as in the past.
Explorers have always gone first into the unknown, but they are followed by the
entrepreneurs, privateers, the gentry, and then the rest of us. As with terrestrial
exploration and progress, adventuresome individuals would lead the way in the
human movement into outer space.
In this book, Chris Dubbs and Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom relate some of the
efforts to answer the "how" question through different visions of personal space
travel. Many folks, including myself, watching the space scene had expansive
and wonderful ideas for using space access for human benefit and in the process
accomplishing the dream of personal space flight.
During the 1970s I became infatuated with the possibilities of space-based
manufacturing and human settlements in space. Studying Gerard O'Neill's
concepts for space colonies was a joy. I devoured all I could get about Krafft
Ehricke's "extraterrestrial imperative." I melded with Harry Stine's "third
industrial revolution." Public membership organizations, such as the grassroots
L5 Society and the more staid National Space Institute (NSI), beckoned to me
with their focus on fostering bigger commercial and government space
programs. In 1977 I applied to be one of NASA's first space shuttle astronauts.
L5 and Ns1 accepted me; NASA didn't. But I was already working on my
backup plan.
Within the next decade my job at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company
(MDAC) in St. Louis had connected me directly with space commercialization,
space shuttle systems, and space flight operations. A good education, the focused
pursuit of a goal, and some good fortune positioned me to take action. I became
industry's first astronaut (and the first card-carrying L5 Society member making
it into space).