Chris Dubbs - Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight (Outward Odyssey: A Peoples History of S)

vii

ix

xiii

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 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).