Masten Space Systems, fresh from a million-dollar win in the NASA-sponsored Lunar Lander X-Prize Challenge, hopes to use its vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket technology to launch a commercial enterprise by the middle of next year.

Dave Masten, founder and CEO of the five-year-old Mojave, Calif., company, said Nov. 6 the company will use the $1.15 million it won by taking first place in the Level 2 lander competition and second place in Level 1 to upgrade its Xoie (pronounced "Zoey") vehicle for higher and faster flight (Aerospace DAILY, Nov. 4).

That vehicle used an aluminum rocket engine burning anhydrous isopropyl alcohol and liquid oxygen to rise to a height of 50 meters, translate horizontally to another pad 50 meters away strewn with simulated lunar boulders, and then land safely.

The next steps, Masten said, will be to devise an aeroshell to permit faster flight and - eventually - re-entry, and to build a new engine that can deliver 2,500 pounds of thrust, versus the 750-pound rating on the Xoie engine.

That configuration should be able to deliver about 50 pounds of payload to what Masten calls the "ignorosphere" - the region of the upper atmosphere between about 100,000 feet and 100 kilometers (60 miles) that is difficult to study with balloons and satellites. The first market will be scientists who need a reliable, rapidly repeatable route to the region.

"We can fly in the morning and in the evening, and do that over a series of days, so you can see how the upper atmosphere changes with time," Masten said. "A sounding rocket, you may be one flight a year, and you hope that you can fly at that time of day that you want to."

Prices will start at roughly $100,000 to fly "a brick" - a simple payload bolted to the vehicle, said Michael Mealling, vice president of business development from the company's sales office in Atlanta. But pricing will be based on number of flights, vehicle services required and other elements, and is expected to drop as the company - and insurers - gain experience with the vehicle.

The company also plans to market the "iterative" engineering it used to develop Xoie and its engine. Drawing on the IT world where Masten got his start as an entrepreneur, the company is offering its skills in research and development in such areas as tank technology, processes, engines, rapid prototyping and operations.

"Our engineering has a little more in common with software development than it does with manufacturing," Mealling said. "When we hit our groove we can do what I would call our compile-test-debug cycle within about 24 to 48 hours, so we can do a flight, figure out what went, wrong, fix the problem, integrate it into the vehicle and be up flying again without about a day or 48 hours."

Masten said the company spent about $2.5 million to win the $1 million prize, which demonstrated the catalytic effect of prize money on private investment. Masten Space Systems actually was founded before the lunar lander X-Prize was announced, he said, but its progress toward a flight vehicle gained from the incentive of the purse.

Xoie photo: Masten Space Systems