Page II: From Paul Allen to Jeff Bezos, high-tech luminaries have ambitions that are out of this world.
Commercial contracts are on the way that could help finance further private spaceflight projects. In one of the first such deals, the SpaceShipOne team announced last week that it licensed the craft's design to British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic division will begin offering rides in 2007 for a hefty price tag.
Private contests like the Ansari X Prize could help bridge the gap until such commercial services become more practical. Last month, Las Vegas hotel magnate Robert Bigelow announced a $50 million prize to the creators of the first privately funded spaceship to reach orbit.
X Prize organisers said their contest will now evolve into an annual event dubbed the X Prize Cup. In a press release, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis said he hopes the event will develop into a spectator sport, much like Grand Prix racing.
But tickets and prize money can't be expected to offset all of the research and development costs. Allen's SpaceShipOne reportedly cost more than $20 million -- double the purse for winning the X Prize contest. As a result, private fortunes are often the only grease for plans that seem so far out there that few are willing to underwrite them.
SpaceDev's Benson made his money developing software in the days of mainframe and "mini" computers. He finds parallels between the development of the space program and the evolution of computers and believes the space industry thinks from mainframe ideas rather than the smaller, faster and cheaper mentality of the PC industry.
"When I founded SpaceDev, it was specifically to bring the microcomputer way of thinking to the space industry," Benson said. "We have a huge industry that's totally risk adverse. Everyone's afraid to be innovative."
Benson enjoys the notoriety from his association with SpaceShipOne, but designing commercial rocket motors only temporarily pays the bills. He's setting his sights much farther into the outer reaches of space to find what he calls "white gold in space" -- water.
The idea sounds at once outlandish and startlingly simple. Between Earth and Mars lies an asteroid belt that's much smaller than a similar belt separating Mars from Jupiter. Within the belt, Benson estimates, 20 percent of the particles are dormant comets in which a high percentage of the orbital rocks contain ice under their surface. Benson wants to send a small space miner that can land onto the surface of asteroids and drill a meter into the surface to extract the ice reserves.
What's the significance of ice? Benson believes it will become the rocket fuel for space travel to Mars. His idea is to harness solar power, concentrate its heat, and boil the mined comet ice, powering satellites and space ships with a steam engine. This would let spaceships refuel en route to more distant destinations without lugging up extra reserves.
"I want be the Standard Oil of space," Benson said. "White gold, not black gold. White gold."
Then there's Musk. After eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, he assembled a team of longtime aerospace engineers and created SpaceX to develop rockets that would cart satellites and other payloads into space.
Musk has already sunk millions of his PayPal earnings, and expects to invest up to $100 million, into the company.
Longer term, Musk hopes SpaceX will gain enough momentum to fund more ambitious businesses such as space tourism, so the company can let humans orbit Earth.
Musk's ambitions are consistent among many tech veterans, whose aspirations have been fuelled by childhood dreams and geek fantasy. If they get their wish, humans may find Earth a bit confining.
"I would like to see SpaceX play an important role for humanity to become a multi-planetary species," Musk said. "There's one obvious contender for humans, and that's Mars."
News.com's Stefanie Olsen contributed to this report.
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