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X Prize Lands in New York; Rocket at Rockefeller Center
By Tariq Malik
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 03:54 pm ET
25 April 2002
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New York A Canadian spaceship rolled into Rockefeller Plaza Thursday as Erik Lindbergh, grandson of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, prepared to retrace his grandfathers 1927 trip across the Atlantic to promote space tourism and an international co NEW YORK, New York A Canadian spaceship rolled into Rockefeller Plaza Thursday as Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, came to Manhattan to promote space tourism with plans to follow his family legacy across the Atlantic Ocean. The spaceship, the Canadian Arrow, and the younger Lindberghs Trans-Atlantic flight, set for May 1, are part of an effort to push private-based space tourism in the public eye and highlight the X Prize, an international competition to put three people in space and return them safely. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. "Its human nature to explore around the next curve and over the next hill," Lindbergh told SPACE.com. "But I think theres an overriding sense of apathy toward space today because its generally well-known that people, children in particular, cant reach it." But the X Prize hopes to buck that notion and open up space to people other than millionaires, such as Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, who paid $20 million a piece to ride a Soyuz capsule up to the International Space Station. The visit to the Big Apple coincided with Shuttleworth's launch early Thursday morning from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Founded in 1996, the X Prize heralds back to the aviation competitions at the start of the 20th century. Those contests, like the $25,000 Orteig Prize set for the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean eventually won by grand pere Lindbergh, pushed air travel from being viewed as a reckless endeavor sought by a relative few to the common mode of transportation used today, said competition organizers. The X Prize competition offers a $10 million grand prize for the first successful launch of a three-person crew to a height of 62.5 miles (100 km) that returns safely in a craft that can be re-launched two weeks later. Since the contests inception, 21 teams from five different countries have entered, with vehicles ranging from jet planes souped up with rocket engines to more familiar designs, like the six-story high Canadian Arrow rocket, a mockup of which was displayed at Rockefeller Plaza and later moved to Central Park. Lindbergh is a trustee and vice-president of the X Prize Foundation, which is holding the X Prize competition, and director of the Lindbergh Foundation. In addition to building support for the competition, his flight will also benefit the Arthritis and Lindbergh foundations. "I think the draws of space travel are its uniqueness, and of course the view," said Linda Smith, a private pilot and former flight attendant who came upon the Canadian Arrow during a walk through Central Park. "It gives you the true global sense of perspective, and I imagine my grandchildren will all be vacationing in space."
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