Will David beat Goliath into space?

On Monday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that its first post-Columbia shuttle launch is scheduled between March 11 and April 6.

Yet as the agency prepares to resume shuttle flights following the Feb. 1 loss of Columbia, 24 teams from seven countries are racing to become the first nongovernment group to launch humans into space. The winner nets $10 million, a shiny trophy, and a place in aerospace history.

Founders of the X Prize, as the competition is known, hope to accelerate the day when the only thing limiting everyman's access to space is a few thousand dollars and a willingness to strap into the passenger seat and enjoy - or endure - the ride.

"We're really trying to change the public's perception of spaceflight," says Byron Lichtenberg, a former NASA astronaut and a founding member of the X Prize. "Instead of being a huge government program with a few select NASA astronauts, or Russians, or someone who has $20 million to fly, we want to try to change the culture where people believe they can go into space."

Entrants range from the expert to the quixotic. At one end of the scale sits Steven McGrath of Bridgewater, Mass. Mr. McGrath, who signed up in May and has been working in the construction industry for the past five years, is currently "undergoing self-training in rocketry design and deep-space propulsion." At the other end sits noted aircraft designer and pilot Burt Rutan, whose company, Scaled Composites, in Mojave, Calif., rolled out his complete flight system in April.

Somewhere in the middle sits the Canadian da Vinci Project team, headed by Brian Feeney, an aerospace engineer, whose 200 volunteers have put more than 100,000 man-hours into the project. The team's launch system is built around a rocket suspended beneath a large balloon. The balloon carries the rocket to 80,000 feet and releases the craft. The rocket's liquid-fueled engines then send it to the 62 mile altitude. After reentry, a steerable parachute brings it back to Earth.

Spaceflight, Mr. Freeney says, has been his dream since childhood. "I made my first gunpowder when I was in the sixth grade and made model rockets" for years afterward, he says. So far, his effort has received $5 million in contributions and in-kind donations from software and aerospace firms, he says. The team is negotiating for a $25 million liability- insurance policy. And he says he anticipates receiving soon the first government approval for any team to conduct a launch.

"This is all about breaking down psychological barriers," he says. "We're not trying to develop better technologies. But we are trying to open up the field" of spaceflight in ways NASA and other national space agencies have been unable or unwilling to do.

"So far, we've had very few rolling eyeballs," among people who learn about his team's effort, he says. And during the past two years, he adds, corporate sponsors have shown an increasing willingness to back his team's effort.

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