A team taking a low-budget stab at the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private manned spaceflight suffered a setback Sunday when their rocket malfunctioned and exploded after shooting less than 1,000 feet in the air.
No one was hurt in the test of Rubicon 1 just south of Olympic National Park. The 23-foot-long, 38-inch-diameter spacecraft carried three dummies simulating the weight of astronauts.
The rocket will have to be rebuilt completely, said Eric Meier, a co-founder of Space Transport Corp. of Forks.
More than two dozen teams are competing to win the X Prize, which is promised to the first organization to successfully launch a privately financed, reusable craft that makes a suborbital flight 62 miles high twice within two weeks while carrying a pilot and weight equivalent to two other people.
