Stephen Fleming

Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech's chief commercialization officer, believes spaceships will one day take off and land routinely from the nation's airports. In fact, he's betting on it.

"I've invested in three privately financed space programs," he said. "And they are all taking different approaches to the core problem — it's too expensive to send people or things into orbit using the space shuttle."

Fleming said he became interested in private space flight in the late 1980s.

"I was living in Washington, D.C., and made friends with a group of people who were involved in space policy," he said. "This was right after the Challenger explosion and these hard-core rocket scientists were saying the space shuttle was like a horse that was designed by a committee but it turned out to be a camel. They were saying there had to be a better way to get people and enterprises into space.

"Several got involved with a privately funded rocket company and when it failed, they approached me — I was a venture capitalist then — and asked if I could find a way to keep a really good team of engineers together. I found some partners and invested some of my own money and that became the nucleus of XCOR Aerospace based in Mojave, California. It's like investing in commercial aviation in the 1920s."

XCOR has developed a series of rocket planes and engines for use in short, suborbital missions, Fleming said.

"There are so many applications for this. It is an invaluable tool for astronomers," he said. "If you can get above the atmosphere for even 10 minutes, it is possible to observe things that can't be seen from Earth. There's only one Hubble telescope and it's almost impossible to get time on it. Our planes allow scientists to see into space as well as use Earth sensing and material testing applications."

To tout the abilities of its planes, XCOR and other private rocketeers created the Rocket Racing League, a kind of futuristic NASCAR event featuring 200 mile-per-hour rocket planes racing around a giant three-dimensional track 5,000 feet above the Earth.

The liquid oxygen/alcohol fuel mix only has a four-minute burn time so pilots must repeatedly shut down their engines and glide, then restart as needed to pass opponents.

"The purpose of the race is not to push the envelope of going higher, farther or faster," Fleming said. "We want to show that rocket operations can be spectacular but routine. If these planes have a problem, you don't have time to put down your tools and go into a conference room. You only have 20 minutes to get back into the air for the next race so you must find new ways to deal with issues. No one has ever operated rockets like they were general aviation."

Four X-Racer planes based on XCOR's EZ-Rocket design are scheduled to compete in a demonstration event in October at Las Cruces, N.M., with a full 10-plane race scheduled in 2007.

Fleming wants to take an even more active role in his investments. If he gets his way, he'll be headed to the heavens as soon as possible.

"I've already signed up for a space trip," he said. "The next XCOR design will have a passenger seat and I fit in it."

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