SpaceDev founder says his craft offers better approach to tourism

POWAY, Calif. -- The man whose firm built the engine expected to power SpaceShipOne into suborbital space today plans to build his own craft and compete with his more celebrated partners, Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, for the extraterrestrial turf.

"SpaceShipOne is revolutionary, but it was designed to take the X Prize, period," said Jim Benson, founder and chief executive of SpaceDev, near San Diego. "It's been a good first step, but I don't think the future of space tourism is going to be with this approach."

SpaceDev created a unique, reusable engine for SpaceShipOne that burns a hybrid (solid-liquid) fuel made largely of rubber and laughing gas, or nitrous oxide.

Early today, the Rutan-Allen craft -- which launches in midair after being carried to more than 40,000 feet by an airplane -- was expected to be launched and halfway to claiming the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Winning the contest requires two successful flights into space (more than 62.5 miles up) within a two-week period.

It's been a feebly contested challenge so far, given that no other team of would-be private astronauts has come close to offering any real competition to SpaceShipOne. The history-making craft was built by aerospace pioneer Rutan and paid for by Microsoft Corp. co-founder and space enthusiast Allen.

Another billionaire adventurer, Virgin Atlantic's Sir Richard Branson, has already licensed SpaceShipOne's technology and committed more than $100 million to using it for a space tourism business to be dubbed "Virgin Galactic."

But Benson, a critical player in developing SpaceShipOne, said he thinks the Rutan-Allen approach will prove to be less than ideal for space tourism.

"When you're a carpenter and all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," he said.

Rutan is an accomplished pilot and airplane designer, he added, who has used his extraordinary skills to figure out how to get a man into space by using the carrier airplane (called White Knight) to lift the combination rocket-plane SpaceShipOne.

"It's still fairly complicated and expensive," Benson said.

What's needed, he said, to truly get space tourism off the ground will be a simpler and cheaper approach that he believes is still going to have to look a lot more like a rocket than an airplane -- at least on takeoff.

That's what Benson and his team at SpaceDev recently announced plans to pursue.

The small firm recently signed a memo of understanding with the NASA Ames Research Center to work toward developing "Dream Chaser" -- a spacecraft that will launch like a rocket and return to Earth landing like an airplane.

Think of a huge craft shaped sort like a stretch F-18 that takes off straight up to enter space and later returns for a horizontal landing.

"We see this as the next logical step towards suborbital and, later, orbital space tourism," Benson said.

Rutan has said he thinks SpaceShipOne, built to achieve suborbital space, can be modified to reach higher altitudes.

Benson said the laws of physics make Rutan's approach unlikely to ever get much beyond suborbital space and equally unlikely to ever lead to a method that will make space tourism a reality for those who can spend huge amounts of money for a brief glimpse at the edge of space.

Benson thinks SpaceDev, with its unique hybrid fuel and a track record in building engines for small satellites, has an edge on the burgeoning private space race. He said he's disappointed that his firm hasn't received more attention for its critical role in helping SpaceShipOne in the race for the X Prize, but he shrugged it off.

"It's an important milestone, and it showed we could do this, put a man in space," Benson said. "But it's mostly just a stunt. What comes next is what really counts."

P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com

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