Microsoft co-founder funds rocket launch

SEATTLE: The world witnessed the dawn of a new space age today, as investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites launched the first private manned vehicle beyond the Earth's atmosphere. The successful launch demonstrated that the final frontier is now open to private enterprise.

Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.

This flight begins an exciting new era in space travel," said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program. "Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites are part of a new generation of explorers who are sparking the imagination of a huge number of people worldwide and ushering in the birth of a new industry of privately funded manned space flight."

Allen, who co-founded Microsoft Corp. with Bill Gates nearly three decades ago, presided over the grand opening of the science fiction museum in Seattle and the space launch in the Mojave desert.

Allen, 51, has emerged as a tireless promoter of causes that blend technology with discovery and funded both ventures for about $20 million each.

After struggling with a range of boom-era investments in technology and media, Allen, now estimated to be worth about $21 billion, is also being viewed as a more active player in the U.S. cable TV industry.

But it is Allen's passion for everything from real-life rockets to Buck Rogers disintegration toys that will take center stage in the coming days.

Allen also presided over the opening of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.

The 13,000-square-foot museum sits in Allen's Experience Music Project building, which was designed by noted architect Frank Gehry.

The museum will house a vast collection of memorabilia, including items from Allen's own collection such as Captain Kirk's command chair from the "Star Trek" television series.

Allen also owns of the Portland Trail Blazers NBA basketball and Seattle Seahawks NFL football teams, ranks as an investor in Hollywood studio DreamWorks SKG and plays guitar in his own rock band, the Butcher Shop Boys.

Allen gained notoriety in the 1990s as an overly eager investor who paid a premium for stakes in risky technology ventures through his fund Vulcan, only to see many of those investments go sour when the tech bubble popped.

Since then, Allen has kept a lower profile while he pared back his investments and focused on his most viable ventures.

Allen is both chairman and the controlling shareholder of Charter Communications Inc., the third-largest U.S. cable provider.

In May, Allen turned up at an annual cable industry convention in New Orleans, where he attracted attention both for his new set-top box technology and for the parties he threw on board Octopus, the world's largest privately owned yacht.

The $200-million vessel features two helicopters, a professional recording studio and a permanent crew of 60.

BUDDIES WITH BILL

Allen's journey began in 1968 at a private Seattle high school when he and Gates began to hang out in the computer room, where the mother's club had paid to put in a computer terminal.

Three years later, Allen spotted an article in an electronics magazine about the world's first microprocessor built by Intel Corp., now the world's largest maker of chips for personal computers running Microsoft's Windows program.

But it was not until 1975 that Allen and Gates sold their first product, for what many consider to be the earliest desktop computer, the Altair 8800. They had begun calling their venture "Micro-Soft" and by 1978, the fledgling software maker had chalked up its first $1 million in sales.

In 1981, Microsoft struck gold by licensing its MS-DOS operating system for IBM's new personal computer and by keeping the right to sell its software to other computer makers, setting the stage for the PC industry as it exists today.

In 1983, Allen left Microsoft after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, from which he recovered fully after several months of radiation therapy.

Microsoft's initial public offering in 1986, and the subsequent stratospheric rise in the company's share price in ensuing years turned Allen into one of the richest men in the world.

Allen is a major contributor to the SETI, or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence project. He is also funding Project Halo, an attempt to use artificial intelligence to create a "Digital Aristotle", an intelligent program capable of solving complex scientific problems.

© Reuters (With additional inputs from CIOL Bureau)