By James S. Tyree

Transcript Staff Writer

For $200,000, you — yes, you — may be able to fly into space within the next two years.

Customers would spend only five minutes about 100,000 kilometers above the earth, but they could come back and say they experienced weightlessness in what is defined as the edge of space.

The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority (OSIDA) is a state agency working on achieving that goal by 2007. David Faulkner and former NASA astronaut John Harrington, both of Rocketplane Inc., and OSIDA executive director Bill Khourie explained their progress Wednesday during the authority’s October board meeting at the Stephenson Research and Technology Center on the University of Oklahoma campus.

Board chair Ken McGill said OSIDA holds board meetings throughout Oklahoma so more residents “have an opportunity to find out what we’re doing.” OSIDA resulted from the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Act signed in 1999 by then-Gov. Frank Keating with the goal of creating a commercial spaceport within 10 years to boost economic development.

Several states, from Washington to Virginia, are trying to attain commercial spaceport licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration. OSIDA already has a “spaceport” in Burns Flat, a facility with a runway long enough for a space vehicle to land, and the authority hopes to earn an FAA license for it next year.

“According to the FAA, we’re so far along, the others aren’t on the radar yet,” McGill said. “We’re at least two to three years ahead.”

McGill said ultimately, OSIDA sees the Burns Flat spaceport servicing not only suborbital space tourism, but also satellite and other space-related industry that could bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the state.

Khourie said California has a landing strip for a spacecraft, but it’s at Edwards Air Force Base and a company cannot use it without the base’s permission. The director said Oklahoma is the first state to have a spaceport beneath national, non-restricted air space.

Meanwhile, Rocketplane is working on its Rocketplane XP, a converted Lear jet that will have rocket boosters. Faulkner, Rocketplane’s program manager, said the plane will rise to 25,000 feet before rocketing upward at 3.5 Gs (weight of acceleration of gravity) on a 70 degree angle up to 100,000 kilometers, which is a little more than 62,000 miles above Earth.

The craft will re-enter the atmosphere at 4 Gs, compared to the 17 Gs of a NASA space shuttle, restart the jet engines and fly home as a normal plane.

Four people have bought tickets to a space flight, and McGill said the marketing has yet to start.

The prospect also excited Harrington, who left NASA and returned home to Oklahoma and recently joined Rocketplane. Harrington was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor in late 2002 and, considering NASA’s troubles, figured he would return to space sooner this way.

“I was really keen on what they were doing,” Harrington said of his decision. “I was really impressed with their engineering team.”

State Sens. Cal Hobson, D-Lexington, and Gilmer Capps, D-Snyder, who chairs the Aerospace and Technology committee, attended the meeting and supported more state funding. Hobson credited Capps as being among the first champions of an Oklahoma space initiative, back when most lawmakers including themselves considered them foolish.

“There are real dreamers and visionaries at the Capitol, and I’ve seen two of them use their political chips and put their careers on the line for this,” Hobson said.

Some people at the meeting returned recently from a space flight event in New Mexico at which Gov. Bill Richardson said his state would invest $100 million into its space industry development. Recognizing the financial push from New Mexico and other states, OSIDA board members said it’s imperative for Oklahoma to receive more funding.

The OSIDA board approved a $2.2 million budget for fiscal year 2007, which includes a base budget of nearly $600,000 and needed one-time expenses of about $1 million for a mission control room and $600,000 for security fencing. The authority also is working on getting two federal grants totalling $3 million and hopes to get more state funding, which both senators in attendance support.

“What better way to fund a centennial project than this,” said OSIDA board member Phil Kliewer. “This is the path to the new frontier.”

James S. Tyree

366-3539

jtyree@normantranscript.com