Jim Benson: From Computers to Rocketships

Click on the post title above and go here. That's a photo of Jim Benson staring back at you. He's an average looking guy, no "S" emblazoned on his shirt like some comic book hero. But he sure is a super man in my opinion.
The guy started out tinkering with algorithms (I can't even spell it without help) and wound-up creating the first commercially successful PC-based text searching and retrieval software. Software that would lead to today's large Web-based search engines like Yahoo and Google.
Of course Benson wasn't really interested in that. No, he wanted to expand his horizons. So, after a couple years of research he decided to plunge into the realm of what had been up to that point, science fiction. He started SpaceDev LLC in 1997.
That was eight years ago, and boy, has he come a long way. You'll never guess what SpaceDev is up to these days. From a press release at their site dated May, 12, 2005:


Last September, SpaceDev announced it had signed a Space Act agreement with NASA Ames Research Center to explore various designs for safe, affordable sub-orbital and orbital human space flight. SpaceDev’s initial study analyzed and compared various higher performance hybrid-based propulsion modules and passenger vehicle designs. Detailed, comparative launch trajectory and re-entry analyses were performed in conjunction with the NASA Ames thermal protection team in order to evaluate the performance requirements for the propulsion modules, and to define a thermal protection system design that would provide the cost, performance and safety necessary for routine passenger flights to low orbit and back.

This preliminary study resulted in the conceptual design of a six passenger vehicle combined with a set of hybrid propulsion modules that burn rubber and laughing gas, as in SpaceShipOne, that together could meet the needs of the quickly emerging commercial space tourism market. NASA’s need for routine, safe and affordable access to the International Space Station and its proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle, and other possible, future government and commercial low Earth orbit destinations could be incorporated into this project.


Read the whole article here.
The guy is living a Virginia Slims commercial (look it up if you don't get it.) And that's not all. Here's a little story about their Spaceship, called DreamChaser. It will use the same non-toxic fuel system used by SpaceShipOne, probably because it uses the same engine design. (Both were built by SpaceDev engineers, of course.)
All of this seems too much like science fiction to be real, but it is. I guess when you take the business acumen of someone like Benson and combine it with a great imagination, the sky is not the limit.