Gary Hudson wants to build an inexpensive helicopter powered with rocket engines that will lift tourists into space. 'it's such a wacko idea,' he says, 'that I have a great deal of faith that no competitor will think it'll work.' That sort of clears out the field. Hudson has spent 25 years as a maverick in the commercial space industry, including a long stint in the 1980s as founder and president of Pacific American Launch Systems Inc. For most of that time, Hudson tried to buck NASA and develop reusable single-stage commercial rockets, which look pretty normal. Then a few years ago, he came across this helicopter idea: About three years ago, my friend Bevin McKinney sat in a conference room at American Rocket Company, a business he co-founded, and told me about an idea he had. He wanted to build a space helicopter - a rocket ship powered by a huge propeller. My first reaction was to patiently say, 'Bevin, that's insane.' My second reaction was to keep listening. The difference between 'insane' and 'insanely great' is often only a matter of shifting perceptions, something Bevin excelled in. Some of his earlier insane ideas - such as a hybrid liquid- and solid-fuel rocket that couldn't blow up - turned out to be insanely great. For years both Bevin and I had been frustrated that space was the exclusive province of government space agencies and hero astronauts. We both wanted to go to space for the sheer fun of it and, in the finest capitalist tradition, make a few bucks along the way. Our careers had taken us, independently, in virtually the same direction. When we first met, we were competitors working on expendable commercial launch vehicles - throwaway rocketry. But we both believed that these expendable rockets were just the first step to achieving our real goals of opening the space frontier to the common man - in other words, ourselves. Bevin arguably had been more successful than I. He'd founded two rocket companies and had built and flown the Dolphin, a prototype of an expendable commercial satellite launcher. While I had gotten the first private launch vehicle in the US to the pad a few years before him, his actually worked. While I was working on ideas for inexpensive reusable rockets during the 1980s, Bevin was racking up successful firings of large hybrid rocket engines more often than anyone else. But, sadly, when we talked that spring of 1993, both our companies were being driven out of business by government-funded competitors. We needed an edge, and this time we needed to cooperate, not compete. Contrary to its image, the aerospace industry is hidebound, with scant reward for innovation. Little has changed in fundamental rocket technology since the V-2 rockets were flown 50 years ago. Much of that is due to the politics played within NASA, within the private sector industry, and within Congress. It's in the interests of many of these players to keep expensive, multistaged rockets as the norm. That political environment changed somewhat after the Challenger exploded, but commercial rocketry still has had a hard time getting off the ground. In my view, it's because the roots of rocketry were not in air transport but in artillery. Today's American commercial launchers are all derived from military ICBM technology. Throwaway rockets became the only way to go to space. But imagine throwing away an airliner after a single flight: the price of a ticket would be - pardon the pun - astronomical. As far back as 30 years ago, a few brave souls began offering an alternative idea: the single-stage reusable rocket or spaceship. They weren't talking about what became the US space shuttle because that vehicle uses multistage boosters and a throwaway external tank to get into orbit. These ideas, including a few of my own, eventually led to the government's successful DC-X program, now segueing into the X-33 near-orbital reusable launch vehicle. Developed in only 18 months for 10 percent of the cost of a single space shuttle flight, the DC-X went a long way toward demonstrating the promise of a reusable, affordable, single-stage spaceship that eventually could carry humans. As I sat in that American Rocket conference room absorbing Bevin's wild notions about a rocket with a propeller, I began thinking that maybe his idea held the most promise yet. This idea just might make the transition from 'insane' to 'insanely great.' He'd even come up with a cool name for his spaceship, full of sound and maybe a little fury. The Roton. Gary C. Hudson ([email protected]) was the designer of the first privately funded space launch vehicle built in the US. He has teamed up with Bevin McKinney to develop the Roton. Their new company is called HMX Inc.