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Space Race 2: Flying High Beyond The Sky <br /><br />Huntsville AL (UPI) Oct 26, 2004 <br />Burt Rutan cast an eye around the crowd pressed into Moontown Airport's biggest hangar Saturday night. There was not much room - the seats had been filled since 7 - and the rain kept folks pretty tightly packed inside. <br />The crowd represented Rutan's past and future: aviation enthusiasts and private pilots, who frequent the grassy strip airport, located 25 miles east of Huntsville, and rocket scientists, most of whom work at the NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center at the other end of town. <br /><br />Rutan, who has been averaging better than one new aircraft design every year for the past three decades, confessed he is finished with airplanes for a while. The mission now for his Mojave, Calif., team is to create 3,000 new astronauts a year, beginning in four or five years. That is per departure point, Rutan quickly added, and per ship. <br /><br />Mojave is not going to be the only place in the world where there will be a place to buy tickets and fly a spaceflight, Rutan told the audience. He said it is mystifying why rocket-builders have been ignoring the most obvious and lucrative payloads in their quest to beef up business. <br /><br />You carbon units, he said. You who are easily replicated by unskilled labor. You are the most valuable payloads. Other payloads are very expensive to build and launch, but you all will pay for your ride. <br /><br />Next week, Rutan and his business partner, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., collect on a $10 million prize won for flying a three-person, privately developed craft into sub-orbital space twice within two weeks. <br /><br />Even before the competition was over, Rutan had found his next partner, Richard Branson. The British tycoon and flamboyant chief of Virgin Group in London has pledged to more than quadruple Allen's $20 million-plus investment in SpaceShipOne. In exchange, Rutan promised to deliver a fleet of spaceliners to car