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It’s been a long time coming. After nearly 50 years of launching satellites and astronauts from other countries, Canada is now set to enter the arena as a space faring nation. And what a ride it’s going to be. From taking passengers into space to extreme sports in the form of space diving (yes, skydiving from 60 miles up), we’re set to make some extreme records. Man + rockets = serious fun.

The dream began in 1996 with the creation of the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, a private race into space which was won last year. This race was created to encourage private groups to develop cost-effective rockets which allow us, the average Joe (with some serious money) to get into space. While the prize was won by Burt Rutan and SpaceShip One, many of the other teams are still pressing onwards to become pioneers in the new fl edgling industry. The real benefits are still to come to those who have invested time and money in the venture, as well as the potential consumers.

For Brian Feeney, the dream is still there. As team leader of the first of two Canadian entries, the da Vinci crew is set to become the second private group to launch individuals into space. This isn’t just for people who train for years through government astronaut training centres, or for multimillionaires who want to indulge in the latest whim.

“I began making my own rockets and fuels from grade 6 up,” Brian says. “It’s been a life-long dream. I was in the aerospace sector with a life-support systems company in the 80’s.” And then in May of ‘96, the X-Prize competition was announced. “I began work on it the same week of the announcement.”

While typical rockets are launched from the surface, this uses a lot of fuel. In fact, the majority of the fuel is used to get the thing moving. Remember physics? Things at rest just don’t want to move (much like you on a Saturday morning). The problem with this launch method is that you have to move both yourself and the fuel. This costs money, and has another problem, as you will see, as a launch is one large controlled explosion.

When the space shuttle launches, the white booster rockets on the sides are basically two pipes filled with solid fuel. Once it’s lit, there’s no turning it off . The large orange tank on the shuttle is filled with liquid fuel, making it one large potential bomb. Think Challenger.

These reasons have led some teams to think of other ways to get up into space. The team that won the X-Prize hitched a ride on an aircraft to get up to altitude. Feeney and his team have found a diff erent way of getting around the whole extra fuel problem by using a method that’s never been used before in manned spaceflight. The rocket will be hung below an enormous helium balloon and carried up 40,000 feet.

A balloon launch has some added safety features. Feeney explains. “Air launch off ers additional safety margins should unanticipated things go wrong. Ground bases launches require substantial abort systems (Apollo and Soyuz style crew escape systems). Ground launch also requires much lager engine and total installed impulse fuel.”

So just how big is the balloon? Try almost 157 feet in diameter and a whopping 200 feet in length fully inflated. That’s larger than a football field when laid out. The 4014 pound balloon is made from 4.5 mil thick polyethylene sheets. The volume is 3,698,167 cubic feet, or 104,615 cubic meters, with a lift capability of 15,270 pounds, or 6,922 kilograms. That’s one BIG balloon. In fact, it has the distinction of being the largest reusable helium balloon on record.

While taking an hour-long balloon ride over Saskatchewan at this height is all fun and all, the best is yet to come. Once the 80,000 root marker is reached, the Wild Fire Mark-VI rocket capsule below releases. Yeah, remember the rocket, the reason we’re here? Well, this is where the rocket engine kicks in, with 4 times the force of gravity pushing the occupants into their seats. Now there’s a kick in the pants.

After about 100 seconds, the main engine cut off occurs at an altitude of 206,000 feet and a maximum speed of 2,670 miles per hour, or 1.19 kilometres a second, has been reached. The rocket continues up to the top of an arch at 75 miles up, or 120 kilometres, and then begins a glide for 105 seconds. But before it’s over, the occupants experience zero-G for about 3.5 minutes.

The return to Earth is once again full of innovation. Much like the early days of rockets, a parachute will guide the newly-christened astronauts to safety. And much like other aspects of this flight, the entry has its own unique methods.

Remember back in school when you played badminton? When you hit the shuttlecock, how it came down relatively slow and steady? Well, the da Vinci team have developed an inflatable heat-resistant cone, or ballute, to use the same concept for re-entry. By using this method, the cone will act like the shuttlecock and help slow down the entry speed of the capsule.

But in order to develop this sort of innovation costs money, though. So where does all this funding come from?

For the first few years, money trickled in from wherever they could find it. Volunteer work made up for a large part of the design and manpower. To date, over 150,000 man hours have been put into the project.

Volunteer hours can only do so much, however. In 2000 the team was fi nally able to obtain corporate sponsorship. And once that ball started rolling, it really started to build up momentum. Sponsors now include Sun Microsystems, and Golden Palace, the online casino that has bought such notable items as the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich, and one of Playboy Cover Girl Tawny Peaks’ 69-HH silicone breast implants that were sued in 1998 for assault.

The da Vinci team isn’t the only game in town, though. Coming out of London, Ontario is the Canadian Arrow team, and they want to get a piece of the pending space industry.

Their approach is simple. Take technology that’s already available and use it to get into space. No new launch methods for them; an old fashioned ground launch suits them just fine. Looking at their design, one gets a sense of deja vu. The rocket’s shape is similar to the rockets from old Saturday morning cartoons.

In fact, the basic design is similar to the V-2 rockets that rained on London during the Second World War. This design was also used as a model for the rockets which took the first Americans into space. Unlike the da Vinci rocket that launches from 700 metres below a helium balloon, the Canadian Arrow rocket is designed to be a twostage launch vehicle from a launch base in either Virginia or Manitoba. The lower half at 53 feet in length is the workhorse for this craft, using a single liquid fuel rocket to push the upper stage to altitude. The design of the rocket thrust chamber is straight from the V-2 rocket, with some modern tweaks.

Once the lower stage has pushed the upper stage as far as it can after one minute of pure thrust the separation of the two parts occurs. While the lower section parachutes back to Earth for re-use, the upper stage kicks in with four smaller rockets to continue pushing the passenger compartment further up and into space. As air thins around the craft, the travellers experience weightlessness at over 100 kilometres up. For a better view, the pilot can use thrusters to turn the capsule.

What goes up must come down. And so it is with this voyage into space. As the craft descends once again into the atmosphere, a drogue ballute infl ates, causing  drag and slowing the craft down until the parachutes can be deployed. As with the first American astronauts, this capsule of newly-christened astronauts is delivered into the water by parachutes to await recovery.

But all this is a pointless venture unless there are customers to pay for trips. So just who are these companies looking at for clients? Well, there are several niches available.

The first and most obvious is the guy who’s always wanted to be an astronaut. With this market, tourists going into space would actually be considered astronauts. And boy, that has the makings for a great pick-up line. “Yeah, I’m an astronaut, and I have a flight tomorrow. Pretty risky stuff … there’s a chance this may very well be my last night on Earth…”

Each company also has their own sales pitch for customers. The da Vinci team is marketing to the would-be astronauts. After all, who wouldn’t want the opportunity to see the world from the edge of space? Career astronauts have said that once a person sees our planet from space, their perspective changes, both of themselves and others.

While the Canadian Arrow do have space tourists in mind for potential customers, they have come up with another interesting angle to sell. And it’s an angle that could really work as an extreme sport: space diving.

Back in the early days of the manned space program, someone realized that during the launch of a rocket with that much fuel things could go wrong, and in a big way. So a plan was hatched to allow an astronaut to bail out from the capsule. The problem is, once you’re up that high, there’s one minor problem…no oxygen, which has been shown to come in useful in keeping alive.

A pressure suit and helmet were created to allow the diver to breathe during the descent. And what a descent it is: during the fall from 32 kilometres up, a person really starts to pick up speed. A lot of it. With the air as thin as it is at this altitude, the jumper can actually break the speed of sound, creating a sonic boom with his very body.

Now that’s what I call extreme. And that’s what I’d call fun.

So what are the chances of getting to do any of these adventures? Will you have a chance to become an astronaut? Well, the chance to do it may be coming quite soon. “We are trying to complete the first unmanned and manned flights prior to the end of the year,” says Feeney of the da Vinci team. “Initial commercial operations will begin late in 2006.”

The cost is another factor for getting potential customers to go. While Dennis Tito paid upwards of US $10 million to go up in the shuttle, the cost of a sub-orbital flight will be considerably less. Feeney explains. “The only public price quoted so far is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Company (Commercialization of Space Ship One – Burt Rutan). They’re going to hit the market in mid to late 2007 at US $200,000 a seat. It won’t take too long to bring the cost down to under US $100,000 per seat. I expect a ticket price of less than US $10,000/ seat in (less than) 10 years from initial full operations.”

So now it’s a matter of details. The technology is there. The teams have proven their technologies work, and that it’s within reach.