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CNN Saturday Morning News

Small Rocket Could Someday Make Space Tourism Possible

Aired January 26, 2002 - 07:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: High above the Mojave Desert, a small team is continuing successful tests of a very small rocket that may one day make it possible for tourists to fly in space.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Space has never been an easy place, until now. This is the EZ Rocket, an airplane powered by a potent mix of liquid oxygen, alcohol, and high hopes. It won't go to space, but its creators believe it's the first step toward an out-of-this-world breakthrough -- cheap, easy access to orbit.

(on camera): Is easy access to space an idea whose time is coming?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think so. Now, whether it's here or not, the only way to find out is to try.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): It's a humble craft for such an audacious goal. Most of the dozen or so employees of XCor are refugees from companies that have gone bust trying to do the same. But they are undaunted.

BUZZ LANG, XCOR AEROSPACE: It'll take us a while to do that, but we've gotten -- to do this for -- it took less than a year for concept to here it is working, and less than half a million dollars. Not bad.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Not -- that is just the exact opposite of a NASA approach to things. Is this a better way to do it?

LANG: It's our way. This is all -- the only way we can do it.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): They toil in cluttered, ad hoc quarters at the fabled Mojave Airport in California's high desert. In 1986, the first airplane to fly nonstop around the world without refueling, Voyager, lifted off from this place.

The man who is at the controls, Dick Rutan, is XCor's test pilot, who has now logged a half-dozen flights.

DICK RUTAN, XCOR AEROSPACE: It's pretty much of a standard airplane until you turn on the two switches that lights those two rocket chambers. Then you're along for the ride, and it's really good. O'BRIEN: The EZ Rocket takes off and climbs in a hurry under rocket power for two and a half minutes. And then when the fuel runs dry, glides in for an unpowered, dead-stick landing. The XCor team would like to fly their EZ Rocket frequently, perhaps five times in one day, to prove they have indeed found an easier way, and hopefully attract the $10 million they need to build their next-generation vehicle, which they hope will fly supersonic briefly to the edge of space.

RUTAN: Maybe civilians can have access -- you know, civilians, non-government, non-multimillion-dollar space programs that people can fly in space, civilians, and maybe do it with what they have in their garage, more or less.

O'BRIEN: Miles O'Brien, CNN, Mojave, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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