Focus On Control System Problems

With the first manned commercial flight into space now safely under his belt, Burt Rutan and his Mojave (CA) company, Scaled Composites, are almost ready to set their sights on the Ansari X-Prize. It's a $10 million cash outlay that will cover about half of the cost of developing SpaceShipOne.

The watchword in that last sentence is "almost." Before Rutan sends his ship 62.5 miles into space again, he wants to address a troubling control surface problem, one that caused the spacecraft to miss its intended target position by 22 miles a week ago Monday.

"There is no way we would fly again without knowing the cause and without ensuring we had totally fixed it," said Rutan in an interview with the LA Daily News.

But, as with most Rutan ventures, there is a sense of confidence that this, too, can be overcome.

"We will know exactly what caused that," said Mike Melvill, the man who piloted SpaceShipOne on its historic flight last week.

That process of discovery could be a factor in SpaceShipOne's attempt to snag the X-Prize. Scaled Composites must notify the Ansari X-Prize Foundation 60 days before its attempt, according to the rules. First, of course, Rutan plans to address the control system issue.

FMI: www.scaled.com