Canadian X-Prize Entrant Unveils Full-Scale Engineering Prototype Rocket

Mission Flight Movie

This weekend at the Toronto Aviation Aircraft Show one of two Canadian entrants in the X-Prize competition will unveil their full-scale engineering rocket. Brian Feeney a self-proclaimed civilian astronaut and industrial designer leads the Da Vinci team. The Toronto based team is made up of a small group of dedicated entrepreneur-visionaries with several volunteers helping out. With little resources and scant media attention they are trying to do what no civilian group has done before.

Their quest is reminiscent in many ways to the Canadian Avro Arrow CF-105 jet fighter project of the late 50’s. Canadian engineers built what was then considered the best fighter jet of its time. The plane never reached the production stage as political pressure killed the project. However many of the engineers were immediately recruited by NASA and played a major role on many US space projects including Apollo.

The X-Prize was founded in 1996 for the specific purpose of stimulating the creation of a new generation of launch vehicles designed to carry passengers into space. Currently the only way to get into space is by way of the US Shuttle or the Russian Soyuz. This week the first space tourist was launched into space on a Soyuz, however the trip cost him a reported $20 million. It is hoped that this new generation of reusable launch vehicle will bring the cost of getting people into space down paving the way for expanding space commercialization.

The winners of the X-Prize will get $10 million US. The two primary criteria for winning the X-Prize are; that the team be privately financed and built (no government support is allowed) and that the flight vehicle must be flown twice within a 14-day period. Each flight must carry at least one person, to minimum altitude of 100 km. The flight vehicle must be built to carry a minimum of 3 adults. The X-Prize foundation chose the 100 km altitude because it is beyond the official 50-miles that the US Air Force recognizes as worthy of astronaut wings but not high enough that the reentry speed requires exotic heat shielding.

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The da Vinci team plans on winning the X-Prize this year. They claim that they are the only team to have flight tested their engines. After this weekends unveiling of the engineering prototype rocket the team expects to sign their prime sponsor within 6-8 weeks. At present they have raised about $1 million of in kind donation, some cash and have media sponsors lined up. The additional funds from the new sponsor will enable them to attempt their unmanned test later this year followed by a manned test less than two weeks later as stipulated by the X-Prize rules. Unlike the politically doomed Avro project should the privately funded da Vinci rocket take flight a new chapter in human exploration will have begun.

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