"When it comes back into the atmosphere," says Cordle, "it's going to be traveling pretty fast, about 3,500 miles per hour. So around 30,000 feet, that's when I'll start bringing the nose back a little bit. I'll just ease it back, slow it down, and put it in the water. It won't be gentle; it'll be kind of a rough ride. But the landing and the gliding in, to me, are going to be a very safe operation. I don't take risks. I stay inside the envelope."
At Harry Dace's air-conditioning ductwork plant, pinned to a wall of his office, there's a large map of the world -- and of the future as he sees it. Magic-markered lines connect various cities, and above each line is written the time it would take to make a suborbital flight from one point to the other: 35 minutes from Los Angeles to Sydney; ten minutes from Boston to Ireland.
"You want to play the numbers game?" asks Dace. "Okay. Let's play the numbers game."
Take the Los Angeles-to-Sydney route, says Dace. If his rocket has room for six passengers, and he charges each passenger $5,000, and he makes three trips a day, 200 days a year, he'll gross a cool $180 million a year just on that route.
Of course, those projections focus on the future. Right now, Dace and Akkerman are playing a different, grimmer numbers game. Dace figures that it'll take $10 million to begin construction of the Mayflower II, and it's $10 million that he and Akkerman don't have.
To generate seed money, they've turned to would-be space travelers. Federal regulations prohibit charging for rides on experimental vehicles, so Dace doesn't come right out and say that he's charging $3,500 for a rocket ride. Instead, he says he's selling "memberships" in his Civilian Astronauts Corps. According to Dace, CAC members will actually own the rocket, but will agree to sell it back to Dace and Akkerman after the ride. That way, if the thing crashes, "their wives and kids can't come back and sue us." Of course, he hastens to add, he's not expecting anything of the sort.
Dace figures he needs to sign up 2,000 customers by this summer for work to begin. So far, he's had 20 takers.
One of them is 21-year-old Toney Hermes, an employee of Fox Sports Southwest. Hermes, a self-described thrill junkie, stumbled across the project's web page, and over his girlfriend's objections, made a reservation on CAC's first flight. That one, he says, is the one that'll get all the attention. The one that'll make history.
And, maybe, the one that'll win Dace and Akkerman the $10 million. Two years ago, a group of St. Louis businessmen established the X Prize Foundation, which offers that prize money to the first private team that flies two passengers to the suborbital height of 62 miles above the Earth -- and then does it again within two weeks. The foundation hopes to kindle the spirit of competition that propelled Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic; so far, 16 would-be space enterprises have entered the competition. X Prize officials say that all have a shot at winning.
But, so far, the pack of contenders doesn't particularly impress the space powers-that-be. "We think space should be open to commercial opportunities," says NASA spokesman Brian Welch. "And we're doing everything we can to make that happen. But what we've found over the years is that flying in space is difficult and costly and dangerous."
Other space-industry observers offer Dace and Akkerman even less encouragement. Two weeks ago, NASA and the Space Transportation Association, a private group that claims to represent companies hoping to develop commercial space travel, issued a report predicting that the first private-sector trips into space will likely charge at least $100,000 per passenger. The report made no mention of the Civilian Air Corps' plan -- at $3,500 per person, an astounding bargain.
"I don't want to knock them," says STA spokesman Eric Stallmer, "because maybe they've got an idea that no one else knows about. But if it was easy to build a vehicle for that price, everyone would be doing it. The idea sounds a little hokey."
Still, Gregg E. Maryniak, chief operations officer of the X Prize Foundation, disagrees with those who doubt the Civilian Air Corps, and invokes the foundation's favorite historical hero. "Lindbergh had completely different technology from all the other teams," says Maryniak. "He had a very lean approach. One pilot, single engine, relatively light aircraft. And because he had such a simple approach, he won. But he was definitely the dark horse at the time."
Such debate means little to Jim Akkerman, who harbors no doubts at all about his approach; he only wonders whether Harry Dace can raise the money to build the Mayflower.
Akkerman's mind is already on other projects, such as privately launched satellites capable of harvesting his beloved solar energy, and a rocket even more ambitious than the Mayflower. "A suborbital ride is just the tip of the iceberg," he says. "The real kick in the ass is going to be orbital flight. Spend two or three hours circling the earth -- now that will be a ride.
