Spaced Out

It's one small step for man. One giant leap for the Super Shuttle. Not the NASA one - the creaky passenger van that eventually picks you up at the airport. The brave new world is coming and it's commercialism in space. The first line has been breached. Last week pilot Mike Melvill blasted off 62 miles straight up aboard his SpaceShipOne from the Mojave Desert into the edge of outer space. It was the first privately funded flight out of our atmosphere. The visionaries are hoping that someday we'll all be hitching an atmospheric ride. And if those Super Shuttle vans have anything to do with it we'll all have to orbit the earth three times and everyone will be dropped off before I get to go home.

If all Mr. Melvill really wanted to do was to go 100 kilometers and enter another world, he could have just driven from South Central to Palm Springs and saved Paul Allen the price of a basketball team. Allen, the former Microsoft King Pin and current Portland Trailblazer chief is hoping to blaze a trail into a new (and this time winning) enterprise. He gave at least $20 million bucks to quixotic aviation engineer Burt Rutan. Back in 1986 Mr. Rutan made headlines with his historic Voyager mission. Voyager was the first aircraft to fly non-stop completely around the globe on one tank of gas. Now a generation later, the money Rutan spent on his one tank of fuel is about what it costs to gas up for a drive from LAX to Westwood.

Investing in these sorts of atmospheric adventures eventually pays off with stuff we can actually use. For instance - the trip to the Moon ultimately gave us Teflon, Tang, Mylar and Velcro (unfairly blamed for the Superbowl half time wardrobe malfunction.) But if Rutan's Voyager flight was supposed to spawn a new generation of fuel efficiency, here's a reality check. My friend's Voyager minivan, driven by soccer Mom Laura gets a measly 13 MPG. Although all is not lost. With a car full of leaking sippy-cup kids, its seats have an absorbency that would make Sponge Bob jealous.

Paul Allen, Burt Rutan and Mike Melvill all have their eyes on the prize -- the $10-million Ansari X Prize, given to whatever group can launch a 3-passenger craft into space twice in 2 weeks. Honestly, they should give the prize to anyone who can get 3 people into the carpool lane at rush hour. But, last week Mr. Melvill's wild ride has given us a taste of things to come.