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| 停在洛杉磯莫哈維航太站的白騎士2號。 （路透） |
〔編譯魏國金／綜合28日外電報導〕當英國維珍集團總裁布蘭森與美國太空載具設計家魯坦，28日從1架名為「白騎士2號」怪異噴射機的機艙內向群眾招手時，人類前往太空旅遊的夢想也向前推進了一大步。
維珍集團總裁布蘭森出資研發
布蘭森聲明說︰「白騎士2號的亮相將維珍銀河公司的願景帶至下一階段，也持續證明這個企圖遠大的計畫不僅是確實的，而且對於太空商務安全之旅的目標，也有長足進展。」
子船太空船2號已完成近7成
維珍銀河指出，白騎士2號堪稱是一件工程奇蹟，在它雙機身的中間將裝置載有4名乘客與2名駕駛員的「太空船2號」火箭載具。目前太空船2號已完成近7成。
該 公司說，白騎士2號母船是4引擎噴射機，也是全球最大的碳複合材質飛機，機翼長43米，在白騎士2號飛達其最高的飛行限度1萬5240米後，太空船2號將 脫離母船，靠著混合火箭衝高到離地球100公里之上。從白騎士2號起飛到太空船2號無重力降落，全程大約2小時30分鐘。
白騎士2號又名「伊芙」（Eve）。布蘭森感性地說︰「我們也以我母親伊芙之名來命名它，因為它也代表一個全新的開始，一個讓未來的太空旅人與其他科學家以全新眼光看我們的世界的機會。」
他稍後也表示，他的家人將是太空旅遊首航的乘客之一，他說︰「我將飛上太空，我確定起飛時我會反胃，連同我的孩子、我的父母也將上太空一遊。」
白騎士2號預定今秋試航
白騎士2號預定於今秋首度試航，至明年才可能搭載太空船2號進行處女航。維珍銀河希望於2010年將第1批付費的乘客送達距地球110公里的太空，目前首航乘客已有250餘名，他們都預付了20萬美元（台幣約610萬元）的旅費。
白騎士2號最重要的幕後功臣是科學家魯坦。2004年，他設計的太空船1號創下第1個抵達太空的民間載人太空載具，當時太空船1號便是裝置在白騎士2號的先驅「白色騎士」母船上完成壯舉。此後魯坦與布蘭森合作，致力將研發進行商業化。
去年7月，魯坦的「縮尺複合體」公司3名技師進行太空船2號推進系統測試時，被炸身亡，使得相關計畫蒙上陰影。如今陰霾一掃而光，46歲的首航乘客烏秋吉說，當他看到白騎士2號時，馬上起雞皮疙瘩，「我非常激動，我想，喔老天，距離太空之旅的目標更近了！」
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| 紐西蘭發明家馬丁親自背著他所研發的飛行器。（取自網路） |
編譯管淑平／特譯
從1920年代首次出現在科幻漫畫以來，個人飛行器一直是令人類著迷的飛行夢想之一，紐西蘭48歲發明家馬丁29日將在威斯康辛州美國實驗飛機協會航空展上推出一款宣稱是「全世界第一款實用性個人飛行器」，希望明年上市，每具售價10萬美元（約304萬元台幣）。
每具售價約304萬元台幣
從1960年代起陸續有人提出以金屬、塑膠加上推進器製成的個人飛行器設計，但是都無法飛超過1分鐘；而馬丁推出的這款能飛上30分鐘。
這款飛行器高約1.5公尺，重112.5公斤，停駐時靠3根支架支撐，旋轉翼安裝在2個外形看起來像杯子的圓柱槽中，靠200匹馬力的汽油活塞引擎驅動旋翼產生600磅推進力，使用時像雙肩背包一樣背在操作者背後，透過搖桿控制起降和方向。
紐約時報記者親身體驗後說，覺得真的像在未來世界，但是運作時噪音非常大。
這是馬丁花了27年時間實現5歲以來的夢想。主修生物化學的馬丁，大學開始著手研究個人飛行器，畢業後在製藥生物科技界工作，將工作以外時間和賺來的錢都投注在自家車庫中打造的飛行器上。
1997年研發出原型機，找太太當白老鼠，實驗成功。第2代機找了當時15歲、還不能開車的兒子測試，只為了證明任何人都能學會操作這種飛行器。現在看到的是第11代機。
飛行器的安全裝置包括類似小型飛機上使用的緊急降落傘系統，3個支架有吸震裝置可減緩降落衝擊力，引擎重量和飛行器主體位置低於旋轉翼，以避免重心不穩「倒頭栽」。
馬丁說，為了安全起見，在充分掌握這款飛行器性能前，還沒讓這款飛行器飛超過1.5公尺高，到目前為止親身操作過的12個人飛的時間也都不超過3小時。馬丁希望6個月內能將飛行高度增加到155公尺，屆時他要率先體驗。（取自紐約時報）
The Jetpack: From Comics to a Liftoff in the Yard
John Schwartz of The New York Times tested a jetpack with its inventor, Glenn Martin, left, and Ray Thomsen guiding him. The device was unveiled Tuesday at an air show in Wisconsin.
OSHKOSH, Wis. — To rise off the ground wearing a jetpack is to feel the force of dreams. Very, very noisy dreams.
Back Story With John Schwartz (Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
On Tuesday, an inventor from New Zealand unveiled what he calls “the world’s first practical jetpack” at the EAA AirVenture, the gigantic annual air show here. The inventor, Glenn Martin, 48, who has spent 27 years developing the devices, said he hoped to begin selling them next year for $100,000 apiece.
“There is nothing that even comes close to the dream that the jetpack allows you to achieve,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He called it “about the coolest desire left to mankind.”
For Mr. Martin, the jetpack is the culmination of a dream that began as a 5-year-old in Dunedin, New Zealand. For those who still remember childhood dreams of flying and comic-book visions of the 21st century, the jetpack suggests the possible fulfillment of the yearning for those long-promised gifts of technology.
Buck Rogers and James Bond used jetpacks, and since the 1960s, several real jetpack designs have been built from metal, plastic and propellant. None has flown more than a minute. Mr. Martin’s machines can run for 30 minutes.
At first sight, parked in the back of the U-Haul van Mr. Martin used to cart it to the air show, it did not look like the classic jetpacks of science fiction. It stands about five feet tall and its rotors are encased in two large ducts that look a bit like cupcakes. It rests on three legs. Mr. Martin has somehow made the future look both sleek and nerdy.
“If someone says, ‘I’m not going to buy a jetpack until it’s the size of my high school backpack and has a turbine engine in it,’ that’s fine,” he said. “ But they’re not going to be flying a jetpack in their lifetime.”
It is also not, to put it bluntly, a jet. “If you’re very pedantic,” Mr. Martin acknowledged, a gasoline-powered piston engine runs the large rotors. Jet Skis, he pointed out, are not jets, and the atmospheric jet stream is not created by engines. “This thing flies on a jet of air,” he said. Or, more simply, it flies.
On a couple of test runs in the yard of a home here belonging to a friend of Mr. Martin, the jetpack jumped off the ground as if impatient to get moving, scattering a cloud of dirt and grass clippings.
With the startling power of its twin rotors and its 200-horsepower engine behind my shoulder blades screaming like an army of leaf blowers, it felt almost as if I were doing the lifting myself, with muscles I did not know I had. It felt like living in the future — and, even better, the future we imagined back when it was something to be hoped for rather than feared.
Pressing the left-hand stick forward caused the device to pitch forward slightly, and the jetpack began advancing, a few feet above the lawn. Mr. Martin and a colleague steadied it by grasping hand rails and trotting alongside, like parents teaching a child to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
Then, coming around a curve, Mr. Martin jogged to the right to avoid some equipment on the ground, bringing the jetpack too close to an overhanging tree. The limb was sucked into the rotors with a brief but sickening sound, like a blender trying to make a margarita with twigs. Luckily, he had spare parts and access to a workshop to replace a chipped rotor.
Mr. Martin started trying to make his jetpack dreams come true in college. While he was studying biochemistry, he was also working on painstaking calculations of thrust in the library and researching the Wright brothers’ methodical approach to technology development. He later had jobs in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, but much of the money went to the work going on in his garage. He built a network of enthusiasts who helped him develop his ideas.
In June 1997, seven weeks after the birth of his second child, Mr. Martin figured his prototype was now powerful enough to lift its first flier, so long as that person weighed less than 130 pounds. So he turned to his wife. “I said, ‘Hey, Vanessa, what are you doing tonight?’ ”
Mrs. Martin agreed to be her husband’s levitating guinea pig. Mr. Martin yoked the unit to a pole in the garage so it would lift her without moving around, put a kind of brake at the top of the pole in case the engine was stronger than he thought, and strapped her in.
She admits now that, deep down, she was not sure she would take off. At the same time, she was “very scared” of the device she calls “the beast.”
The engine fired up, sounding angry, she said, and the air started blasting around her. “There’s a moment when it will just bite,” she said, and seem to grab the air and go. “That was it,” she said. “I was totally addicted.”
She said she felt, in a way, that she had conquered it — “the taming of it, that’s so exciting.” It was, she said, “probably the best experience of my life.”
To prove that anyone could learn to use a later prototype, Mr. Martin also enlisted his son Harrison, then 15, as a test pilot. Too young to drive, he learned to fly. The family’s need for secrecy until the project could be patented and properly announced meant that Harrison could not tell his friends about it.
“I can’t think of a better secret,” he said, but added that it was not a hard one to keep. “Basically, for my whole life I’ve had a jetpack in the garage,” said Harrison, now 16, with a shrug, “so it’s just one of those things you don’t talk about.”
With a working engine and video in hand, Mr. Martin was able to start raising enough money to quit his day job and devote himself to jetpack development full time. Before long he had venture capital financing and a PowerPoint presentation.
The current iteration of the product, the 11th, weighs about 250 pounds and provides 600 pounds of thrust. It includes safety features like a so-called ballistic parachute with a small explosive charge for rapid deployment in case of an emergency, like those used in some small airplanes.
The pedestal that forms the main support for the device has a shock absorber like a pogo stick to soften landings. The weight of the engines and body of the flier sits lower than the rotors to create a pendulum effect that discourages the contraption from tipping upside down and creating what might be called the lawn dart effect.
“People come up and go, ‘Is it safe?’ ” Mr. Martin said. “Safety is a relative thing. We think we have done a lot to make this by far the safest jetpack ever built.” But, he acknowledged, “It’s not a high bar.”
He added, “I’ve got to get my head around the fact that at some point, somebody is going to have a very bad experience.”
So far, he said, he and his team of developers have not taken the device higher than six feet. “We set that very deliberately,” he said, to ensure that they fully understand controlling the invention before taking it to more dangerous altitudes. “If you can fly it at 3 feet, you can fly it at 3,000,” he said.
Only 12 people have flown the jetpack, and no one has gained more than three hours of experience in the air. Mr. Martin plans to take it up to 500 feet within six months. This time, he said with a smile, he will be the first.
Mr. Martin said he had no idea how his invention might ultimately be used, but he is not a man of small hopes. He repeated the story of Benjamin Franklin, on first seeing a hot-air balloon, being asked, “What good is it?” He answered, “What good is a newborn baby?”
At the demonstration on Tuesday, a large crowd formed and watched as Harrison took the device a few feet off the ground, barely visible over the heads of the spectators.
"That's a little anticlimactic," said Bob Oliver, a retired airline pilot from Alamo, Calif. But Joseph Tevaarwerk, who helped develop the craft's engine, noted that the world's first airplane flight was only about 12 seconds long. And he added "would you have wanted to be there when the Wright brothers launched?"
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