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Feature Story — January/February 2005

I Saw It ...

The business of space

Photographs the students took with some of the principals involved — including Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation; Burt Rutan, the mind behind the development of SpaceShip-One; and Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who funded the project — tell the story of the vision, entrepreneurship and rocket expertise needed to get a commercial spaceflight project off the ground.

The event demonstrated to the students the significance of business and the potential commercial viability of space travel. California-based Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShipOne, already has entered into a partnership with Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson to develop the world's first privately funded spaceships dedicated to carrying commercial passengers on space flights.

The success of the X Prize has inspired those who traveled to the launches in different ways, particularly in guiding their future career paths.

For Bozek, who decided she wanted to get into the business of space after taking physics in high school, learning about the X Prize and its potential impact on the future of space has expanded her career horizons.

"It gave me a different perspective on how I could use it as a career and not just go mainstream," she said. "It goes beyond NASA. ... People can try to start things by themselves."

Laystrom said the experience increased her enthusiasm about her work and gave her a better appreciation of her own company and the potential that exists within it. CU Aerospace, a small company in Champaign, works to identify and develop new aerospace technologies that can be distributed commercially.

The private development of space could open many more doors to those interested in the field, whose employment options in the past have been limited to NASA, companies that subcontract for NASA or academic fields. Students have taken notice — a record number of freshmen are enrolled in the aerospace major this fall, Coverstone said.

"Many of the students seem to have a real good picture of the commercial component," she said. Conversely, many of the faculty, Coverstone said, were brought up in the Apollo era, where government-sponsored research in space exploration was the only way to get into space.

"I think the students — they're clever, they're going to figure out ways to make money and do things commercially," she said. Commercial viability leads many observers to compare the X Prize accomplishment to the gradual movement of computers into the home — eventually, someone found a way to make personal computers cost-effective and available.

"(Commercial development) is the only way," Coverstone said, "to bring it down to the point where you and I can actually do something with that interest."

Afterthoughts

Residual effects of the Illinois participation at the launch continue. Maryniak returned to campus to speak in November, this time at Foellinger Auditorium. He remained impressed with the Illinois students' efforts to be a part of history.

"It's all about leadership," Maryniak said. "That's what any human endeavor is about."

Upon their return from California, Kittell said the students were fired up to spread the news of the X Prize's impact. Illinois Space Society instituted "Illinois X Day," a special day for members of the group to visit local elementary and middle schools and use the topic of space exploration to teach lessons in math and science. Some members are creating a model of SpaceShipOne for display at the annual Engineering Open House. Others are preparing a presentation about their launch experience for alumni audiences.

Still others are putting together a compact disc of Illinois Space Society members' resumés to hand out at job fairs. "I hope (the X Prize experience) will do a lot, both for the University of Illinois and for Illinois Space Society," said Schaeffer, envisioning that "down the line you can say, 'Hey, I was a member of Illinois Space Society,' and whatever company would say, 'Oh, that's cool — they're a really involved and active organization.'"

By making connections with some of the most important people in the space industry today, the students have already upped the University's profile in the aerospace community at large.

"It raises a national recognition of our department to have these well-known people hold [our students] highly," Coverstone said. "It's just another way of getting more recognition about what we're doing here."

And the Illini participants certainly recognize the historic impact of the X Prize accomplishment.

"It's the steppingstone for something just amazing and something even greater than what we already have," Laystrom said of the spaceflights. "Technology has advanced so far in the past 100 years that I can't even imagine what it's going to be like for the next 100 years.

"This is the first step," she said. "I think it's going to explode from here."

Bleill is a free-lance writer in Champaign.