Straight-up chaser

Alicia Robinson

While he hasn’t yet made it into space, Robert Scherer got pretty

darn close this week.

And he got to watch someone make that dream a reality. Scherer, of

Corona del Mar, flew one of three “chase planes” that followed

SpaceShipOne and the plane that carried it up to the edge of Earth’s

atmosphere above the Mojave Desert on Monday.

The successful mission made SpaceShipOne the first private, manned

craft to travel into space. Aircraft designer Burt Rutan and

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen are the project’s major proponents.

An investor in stocks and commercial real estate, Scherer has been

flying for more than 20 years. For the last six years he has flown a

Beechcraft Starship, an eight-seat plane designed by Rutan that is

somewhat bigger than a private plane such as a Cessna but smaller

than most commercial aircrafts. There were only 50 Beechcraft

Starship planes made, and Scherer’s is one of just four left.

A chance landing at Mojave near Rutan’s company’s hangar ended in

Scherer meeting Rutan, who is one of his heroes, and ultimately was

asked to be a part of the SpaceShipOne flights.

“I’ve always been interested in space development and space

exploration,” Scherer said. “This was a potential to get close to the

best possibility of bringing space into reach of the common man.”

Over the past year, Scherer has flown 10 times for SpaceShipOne

tests. His plane and the other two chase planes follow the White

Knight, a twin turbojet aircraft designed for high altitudes from

which SpaceShipOne is launched, up to about 40,000 feet and then help

guide the spacecraft as it comes back to Earth. They take pictures

and video footage to be studied after the flights, and they keep an

eye on SpaceShipOne for potential safety problems.

The previous missions were secret, so Monday’s test was a

comparative media blitz, or “Woodstock for aviation,” Scherer said.

The press had its own hangar, and about 20,000 spectators lined the

runway cheering and snapping pictures.

Despite a few moments of trepidation during the flight -- an

engine shut off early and some mysterious banging noises were heard

by SpaceShipOne’s pilot -- everyone was overjoyed when SpaceShipOne

touched down safely after reaching its goal of clearing the Earth’s

atmosphere at 328,491 feet.

Now he’s hoping to be part of future tests that will happen before

the end of the year as the SpaceShipOne team tries for the $10

million “X prize,” which is offered by a private foundation as an

incentive to spur space travel development. To win, a team needs to

send a ship that can carry three people to the edge of the atmosphere

twice within two weeks.

Scherer said he thinks NASA has become bloated and inefficient,

and sees SpaceShipOne as the beginning of commercial space travel

development. Now that a few companies are leading the way, others

will join the field, creating innovation and driving down costs

through competition, he said.

“It may take decades to get people to the moon, but I think you’re

going to see space tourism become a broad-based reality in the next

decade,” Scherer said.

But space travel, and even some air travel, is still beyond the

reach of the average person. If Scherer hadn’t wisely invested an

inheritance in tech stocks in the 1980s, it may have taken him years

to afford the Starship’s $2.2-million price tag.

A spacecraft would have to go much faster than SpaceShipOne to get

into orbit around the Earth and even somewhat faster than that to

reach the moon, said William Sirignano, mechanical and aerospace

engineering professor at UC Irvine.

“It seems to me that we’re still a long ways from making it

affordable,” Sirignano said. “I don’t want to say it’s an

insignificant achievement, what [SpaceShipOne] did, but they’re still

way far away from getting into orbit and going to the moon.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.