On a cold, bright winter day in December 1986 I waited with a throng of reporters and aircraft devotees in the Mojave Desert for the return of the Voyager. The specially built aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by his brother Dick Rutan and Jean Yeager was completing a nine-day first ever non-stop flight around the globe. I thought of that event as I watched on the Internet the Mojave ceremony unveiling the latest Burt Rutan flying craft, the Virgin Space Ship Enterprise – the first commercial manned spacecraft.
Sponsored in large part by entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, the spacecraft, which can carry six passengers and two pilots, was developed and built in California at the Mojave Air and Space Port. It will be tested there for a couple of years before moving to its home at Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Both California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson attended the ceremony on Monday.
Schwarzenegger admitted that he did a lot “cool things as governor,” but said one of the coolest things he ever did was take part in introducing the first commercial spacecraft. He pledged to do everything in his power to make sure California remained a leader in air space innovation.
Schwarzenegger pointed out the history of the state in aeronautics from the first rocket plane to the first commercial space craft also created by Burt Rutan. Richardson offered New Mexico’s own historic connection to space as both the place where pioneer rocket engineer Robert Goddard did much of his work and that “little (UFO) incident in Roswell in 1947.” The latter was a joke – I think.
Governor Schwarzenegger is right to encourage space commerce in the Golden State. Not only is there great future potential for this enterprise, but air and space adventure still fires the imagination and polishes the image of a visionary state.
According to the California Space Authority, a non-profit corporation made up of commercial, civil, and national defense interests that supplies support for space-related products and services, the California space industry is a $31 billion business representing 21% of the global space market and providing 370,000 jobs statewide.
I was at the Voyager event to help a long time friend, Miranda Dunne, then a television news reporter for CBS Channel 5 in San Francisco. I volunteered to carry equipment to the press area so I could witness the historic event. Like the image of a row of canon lined along a bluff at Gettysburg National Park, I saw a line of dozens of cameras aimed at the runway waiting to capture the successful approach and landing and beam it to the world.
The excitement and adventure of air and space travel and exploration still stirs the soul. As with the Voyager and now the VSS Enterprise, such endeavors capture the imagination of people around the world. The space exploration business seems made for California and we should do what we can to encourage it.