National Geographic: Destination Space Page #5

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People have fun,

they're very productive.

Rutan runs Scaled Composites,

a company that designs and builds

cutting-edge aircraft.

One of Rutan's latest projects

embodies his philosophy:

First, throw out the rulebook.

The result is his plane Proteus.

This spindly craft can carry a one-

ton payload to the stratosphere-

Proteus might one day

lift a manned rocket capsule.

When the aircraft reaches altitude,

the capsule would detach,

blast into orbit under its own power,

then glide back to earth.

It's looking good.

Powers are great.

I'm going to

leave the power set there.

Controls are alive, feeling good.

Okay, rotating.

Gears coming... 110 would be

a good speed to hold.

If your ambition is to do

a sub-orbital flight,

you want to go to altitude,

to show whoever wants to go up there,

and I want to go too,

what it looks like from orbit.

And then you want to just

float around for several minutes

and just enjoy this-weightless.

You know, bring your house cat

or your lover or whatever

you want to do for this time

while you're weightless.

You know, you just can't do that

on earth, baby.

But if you're single or cat-free,

what would you do in orbit?

Who wants to be the first

to see the earth from orbit

while they're sipping a martini-

r maybe there are people out there

who will do this?

I don't have enough money to do it.

Perhaps if I did,

then I would certainly do it.

But the question is not whether

some people have enough money,

but there's enough interest

to keep it sustained

and to drive the industry to invent

the technology in the first place.

Remember the people used to ask

the same questions about air travel.

Why in God's name

would you want to do that?

How practical could that possibly be?

This whole notion of space tourism

is really a chance to get

the economics going a business

where there are thousands of launches,

money coming back in,

people designing new vehicles,

bringing the price down.

And we go from sub-orbital flights

to orbital flights onto hotels

and onto the moon,

and it's a tremendous opportunity.

Hi, guys. Good morning,

my name is Peter Diamandis,

I'm the chairman of the X-Prize.

Peter Diamandis is offering

an incentive

to the potential Lindberghs

of the 21st century.

So, we're looking for a new generation

of rocket scientists out there

who can go and build launch vehicles

that will carry us into space.

We're trying to make this

on top of here,

with the parachute in here

and put this up...

He is holding out a prize to any kid

who can design a water rocket

that will safely return its fragile

passenger-a raw egg-to Mother Earth.

What we're trying to do here is to

give kids a chance to get hands on

and feel the competitive spirit

and learn how to build these rockets

and get into it so that

they can relate.

It's really neat to look at

the designs and, in particular,

to know that the teachers here

aren't giving them the answers.

Everything they've designed here

is coming out of experiment

or their own imagination

and to see the way

that they're getting their egg

to survive is pretty awesome.

You're going to put your cup in there,

the whole nine yards?

They gotta design this vehicle that

can have the egg safely survive-

and they get the idea that

when it cracks, that egg is dead.

Across town, students from another

school build their own rockets

for the upcoming competition.

One, Jaqui Rogers,

has done her homework.

The thing that surprised me about space

that I have learned is about the moon.

And it was fascinating to me,

because I learned that

there was no wind on the moon,

that Neil Armstrong's footprints

are still up there.

And I learned about the craters

and how they got there.

Destiny Voyager is now complete.

Launch day arrives.

What we're going to do is

we're going to give you guys

a chance to put your eggstranauts

in your rockets.

And you should be done doing that

by the time we get ready

to launch with these guys.

The pad and fuel prepared...

Yeah.

Everybody's got an eggstranaut?

Yeah.

Everybody's got fuel?

Yeah.

And the future rocket cadre

tries to look nonchalant.

There you go.

Unusual designs create their own

unique set of snafus.

This happens at NASA all the time,

you guys.

In fact, the shuttle was delayed

the other day

because they had a bunch of

strings tangled up.

Rocket is secure on the pad.

All systems are go.

The launch director receives

the green light.

Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five...

four... three... two...

one.

Launching these rockets is easy.

Open up, open up...

It's the landing that's hard.

Sorry guys.

Today's lesson?

To become a rocket scientist,

you've got to crack a few eggs.

Excellent.

Parachutes opened.

Any one of these students could grow up

to design rockets or spacecraft.

Some may get the chance to leave earth-

or even to walk on another world.

Whatever it is in our nature

that drove us to the moon

can be found in these kids...

and will continue to spur humanity

upward and outward.

Jaqui Rogers.

If I could go up into space,

I would want to gaze up on the sun.

I would like to look down

on the earth.

And Mars.

I would like to find new things

that have never been found.

I want to see the moon, of course.

And the first thing

that I would search for was

where Neil Armstrong left the flag,

and his footprints,

and that's the main thing that

I'd be searching for.

In terms of exploration,

I think in 50 to 100 years we will have

most definitely facilities on the moon.

We'll have factories there.

We'll have people who are living there.

We'll have hotels there, of course.

We'll have the first real self-

sufficient and vibrant colonies on Mars.

But what makes me excited are going

to be actual independent societies,

off planet, in free space colonies.

I think it will be very much like

it was in the 14 and 1500s,

where there were different groups

who were going off exploring

and fantasizing about

where the best trails are,

where the best next new worlds are.

And that's the future

I'm building towards.

I'm one of those explorers

who can't wait to go off,

you know,

towards that star over there.

To travel to distant stars and

establish colonies seems fantastic today-

but we're not even close to

reaching the limit of what'

Oh, in my day... to think of going up

and breaking the sound barrier,

well that was out,

out of the question period.

No we'd never break the sound barrier.

So you see how things are, can change.

And then, would anybody ever

go to the moon?

Well, that was ridiculous.

Well, we've gone to the moon.

Is it our destiny to

cross the galaxy?

If it was once inconceivable

to reach the moon.

What vaulting ambitions could become

reality tomorrow?

We have already begun

an amazing journey

that will carry us beyond the reach

of our imaginations.

We are entering an era

that will unfetter even dreamers.

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