'Shuttle for Everyone' Prototype To Fly In October
Like many Americans coming of age
during the time of the Apollo missions, Morris Jarvis dreamed of
someday blasting off into space. As a child he sat glued to the
television set as man walked on the moon, and he later studied
aerospace engineering in college. Over the years Jarvis built
countless models of spaceships, exhaustively studied the space
shuttle program and even interviewed real astronauts and NASA
engineers. But even his friends and co-workers were a little
surprised when in 1993 he stopped dreaming, and started building a
space shuttle in his garage in suburban Phoenix.
Jarvis founded Star Systems Inc. and began working evenings,
weekends and vacations, even recruiting some of his engineering
colleagues in his quest. The result is a prototype of his Hermes
Spacecraft, which is on public display for the first time at the
Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco.
Morris and his team are building Hermes out of their own pockets
and figure they need about $1.5 million to finish the test work and
begin regular space flights. The team is undertaking a grassroots
fundraising effort to secure the remaining dollars as well as
recruiting other "dreamers" for their mission.
"There isn't a geek out there who hasn't dreamed of being an
astronaut," says Jarvis. "We're all dreamers."
In contrast to its garage-bound origins and rudimentary
appearance, Hermes carries some high-flying technology inside its
slab-sided fuselage. The craft is loaded with some of Intel's most
advanced embedded chips including the Intel EP80579 Integrated
Processor SOC product line and the Intel Atom processor Z5xx
series. Intel technology powers most of the spacecraft's data
gathering, test and communications systems. Other companies
assisting the Hermes team include ADI Engineering, Dot Hill, GE
Fanuc, MicroSun, and National Instruments.
Hermes' first flight will be an unmanned, tethered flight at
Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in October, during which Morris will
control the spacecraft from a remote cockpit on the ground.
Numerous sensors and computing systems will gather critical flight
data and provide real-time feedback to Morris and his flight
crew.
Once the tethered flights are completed, Hermes will be equipped
with an engine pod so it can be flown like an airplane, unattached
to the ground. In the future, Hermes will be towed to about 113,000
feet above the earth by an ultra-high altitude helium balloon, then
flown back to earth using the remote cockpit. Finally, another test
will be undertaken with an onboard pilot.
If all goes well -- emphasis on 'if' -- Morris and his
colleagues plan to build a production version of Hermes and begin
offering regular space flights. "Hermes is built on the premise
that anyone who wants to should be able to take a trip into space,"
says Jarvis. "We hope to provide trips for about the price of a new
car."