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And getting a human into space is the easy part; it's getting them back that causes the real trouble. The friction of the atmosphere, combined with Earth's gravitational pull, creates an intense and deadly heat. The space shuttle solved this problem with millions of dollars' worth of tiles on its underbelly (although, as a shocked world saw last year, that system is not foolproof).
Rutan woke up one morning six years ago at his desert home in Mojave, Calif., with a heat-beating idea no one had considered before: Why not build a space plane with wings that hinge up at its highest altitude, creating a feathering effect so it floats gently back to Earth like a shuttlecock in a game of badminton? Rutan quickly sketched out his idea and started showing it around.
The reception was muted. Rutan was widely respected in the experimental-plane-building industry, having designed Voyager, the first aircraft to make it around the world nonstop without refueling, which his brother Dick helped fly into the record books in 1986. But the design for SpaceShipOne inspired near universal derision. "When I first saw it, I thought he'd lost his mind," says Mike Melvill, Rutan's oldest employee, longtime friend and faithful test pilot.
To Rutan, the raised eyebrows proved he was on the right track. "If you don't have a consensus that it's nonsense," says Rutan, "you don't have a breakthrough." He showed the design to Paul Allen, the reclusive, science-fiction-loving co-founder of Microsoft. "After a few minutes with Burt," says Allen, "you realize just how innovative he is." Allen, the fifth richest guy on the planet, agreed to fund Rutan's X Prize venture.
SpaceShipOne's lift-off is inventive too. The vehicle is carried aloft tethered to the belly of a futuristic cargo plane dubbed White Knight, which takes off effortlessly and then climbs in circles of ever increasing altitude for an hour. Just when you think White Knight has disappeared from sight, SpaceShipOne separates and ignites its engine, which is fueled by nitrous oxide and rubber, and a plume of white smoke shoots straight up into the sky. Unlike the computer-driven shuttle, SpaceShipOne is controlled by an old-fashioned mechanical stick and rudder. That makes the altitude climb hair-raising for the pilot. "It's going faster than a speeding bullet," says Melvill, who piloted the vehicle's first flight, "and you're trying to control it by hand."
But beginning around 158,000 ft., well before SpaceShipOne's apogee, where the sky goes black and you can see the curvature of the earth, Melvill and fellow test pilot Brian Binnie each had a good four minutes of weightlessness with nothing to do. Both took digital-camera snapshots through the portholes. Melvill scattered a handful of M&M's and watched them float. Binnie took out a tiny model of SpaceShipOne and flew it around the cabin. Then that crazy hinge raises the wings, Earth's gravity kicks in, and SpaceShipOne becomes a glider. "It's like falling into a feather bed," says Melvill.