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1、A plan to build the worlds first airport for launching commercial spacecraft in New Mexico is the latest development in the new space race, a race among private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs to carry paying passengers into space and to kick-start a new industry, astro tourism. The man who
2、is leading the race may not be familiar to you, but to astronauts, pilots, and aeronautical engineers ? basically to anyone who knows anything about aircraft design ? Burt Rutan is a legend, an aeronautical engineer whose latest aircraft is the world?s first private spaceship. As he told 60 Minutes
3、correspondent Ed Bradley when he first met him a little over a year ago, if his idea flies, someday space travel may be cheap enough and safe enough for ordinary people to go where only astronauts have gone before. The White Knight is a rather unusual looking aircraft, built just for the purpose of
4、carrying a rocket plane called SpaceShipOne, the first spacecraft built by private enterprise.White Knight and SpaceShipOne are the latest creations of Burt Rutan. They?re part of his dream to develop a commercial travel business in space. There will be a new industry. And we are just now in a begin
5、ning. I will predict that in 12 or 15 years, there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people that fly, and see that black sky, says Rutan. On June 21, 2004, White Knight took off from an airstrip in Mojave, Calif., carrying Rutan?s spaceship. It took 63 minutes to reach t
6、he launch altitude of 47,000 feet. Once there, the White Knight crew prepared to release the spaceship.The fierce acceleration slammed Mike Melvill, the pilot, back in his seat. He put SpaceShipOne into a near vertical trajectory, until, as planned, the fuel ran out.Still climbing like a spent bulle
7、t, Melvill hoped to gain as much altitude as possible to reach space before the ship began falling back to earth.By the time the spaceship reached the end of its climb, it was 22 miles off course. But it had, just barely, reached an altitude of just over 62 miles ? the internationally recognized bou
8、ndary of space.It was the news Rutan had been waiting for. Falling back to Earth from an altitude of 62 miles, SpaceShipOne?s tilting wing, a revolutionary innovation called the feather, caused the rocket plane to position itself for a relatively benign re-entry and turned the spaceship into a glide
9、r.SpaceShipOne glided to a flawless landing before a crowd of thousands.After that June flight, I felt like I was floating around and just once in a while touching the ground, remembers Rutan. We had an operable space plane.Rutan?s ?operable space plane? was built by a company with only 130 employee
10、s at a cost of just $25 million. He believes his success has ended the government?s monopoly on space travel, and opened it up to the ordinary citizen. I concluded that for affordable travel to happen, the little guy had to do it because he had the incentive for a business, says Rutan.Does Rutan vie
11、w this as a business venture or a technological challenge?Its a technological challenge first. And its a dream I had when I was 12, he says.Rutan started building model airplanes when he was seven years old, in Dyenuba, Calif., where he grew up.I was fascinated by putting balsa wood together and see
12、 how it would fly, he remembers. And when I started having the capability to do contests and actually win a trophy by making a better model, then I was hooked.He?s been hooked ever since. He designed his first airplane in 1968 and flew it four years later. Since then his airplanes have become known
13、for their stunning looks, innovative design and technological sophistication. Rutan began designing a spaceship nearly a decade ago, after setting up set up his own aeronautical research and design firm. By the year 2000, he had turned his designs into models and was testing them outside his office.
14、 When I got to the point that I knew that I could make a safe spaceship that would fly a manned space mission - when I say, I, not the government, our little team - I told Paul Allen, I think we can do this. And he immediately said, Go with it. Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and is one of the riche
15、st men in the world. His decision to pump $25 million into Rutan?s company, Scaled Composites, was the vote of confidence that his engineers needed to proceed.That was a heck of a challenge to put in front of some people like us, where were told, Well, you cant do that. You wanna see? We can do this
16、, says Pete Sebold. Work on White Knight and SpaceShipOne started four years ago in secret. Both aircraft were custom made from scratch by a team of 12 engineers using layers of tough carbon fabric glued together with epoxy. Designed to be light-weight, SpaceShipOne can withstand the stress of re-entry because of the radical way it comes back into the atmosphere, like a badminton shuttlecock or a birdie. He showed 60 Minutes how it works.Feathering the
