The reward is high, but so is the risk as some of the 27 teams pursuing a US$10 million prize for the first privately funded manned spaceflight near a goal that once seemed outlandish.
Organizers of the X Prize believe that teams could attempt the space trip as early as this summer.
When the competition was announced just eight years ago, many were skeptical that any privately financed team could meet the requirements to collect the prize: Build a spacecraft capable of taking three passengers 101km above the planet, then make a second successful suborbital trip within two weeks.
"It's going to happen in 2004. Someone will win it," said Gregg Maryniak, director of the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, a group created to spark development of reusable spacecraft that can take average citizens into space.
Many of the teams vying for the X Prize already have conducted test launches. One US team propelled a spacecraft to 20,400m. While a couple of US teams are among the top contenders, crews from six other nations are also in pursuit of the prize.
It's a diverse group tapping into the same spirit of exploration that led adventurers to sail ships across unknown oceans. Teams range from one financed by a billionaire to a group of scraped-together volunteers. Several boast leading minds who toss around aerospace terms with dizzying precision. Others lament unexpected fires and explosions as part of the learning process.
Safety is stressed, but team members know they're embarking on a journey with built-in risks, maybe even death.
"It's a possibility. It's a cost that exploration has to pay. Otherwise, you stay home and watch TV and eat French fries," said Pablo de Leon, the 39-year-old team leader of an Argentinian group that is building a vertical rocket named Gauchito ("The Little Cowboy").
"If we are not the ones, someone else will do it. But it will be done," de Leon said.
Canadian Brian Feeney, 44, is team leader of the Toronto-based da Vinci Project. In its simplest terms, the group wants to lift a spacecraft called Wild Fire using an immense helium balloon. The design switches over to rockets to fly and uses a steerable parachute to land.
Feeney plans to be on board for the first manned attempt. He said he thinks of the risk as similar to that of climbing Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak. "Life is way too short to not explore those boundaries," he said.
"How many times does a kid have a chance to go into space? I'm living my dream," he said. "I feel like I'm limited; my bicycle won't go as far as I want it to. My grandest dream goes all the way to the stars."
Nine of the 27 teams have built "serious hardware" and four or five appear to be at the leading edge of the competition, according to Maryniak.
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