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Boston, MA -


by Heather Caspi
March 2005

Call them visionaries or call them crazy, but one group of ambitious rocketeers has shown that it doesn’t take a big budget to be a contender in the new race to establish private sector space travel.

“The da Vinci Project” is one of 26 teams that made a run for the $10 million ANSARI X PRIZE, which was awarded in October to competitor SpaceShipOne for sending the first privately funded, piloted spacecraft capable of carrying three people to the edge of space twice within a two-week period, using the same ship.
This new space race, however, is far from over. Now the contest is evolving into a regular competition called the X Prize Cup, and the da Vinci team intends to compete.

Lead Project Manager Mike Viechweg says the ultimate prize in this quest is the chance to make history and to revolutionize space travel the way Charles Lindberg revolutionized aviation through his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic.

Viechweg, a mechanical engineer, glider and Mac enthusiast, says he got involved in the project in 2000 after his boss saw it on the news and told him, “Here’s something crazy you’d probably do.”


Intrigued, Viechweg met with da Vinci Project Team Leader Brian Feeney at a doughnut shop. “For the first hour I thought this is a bit crazy,” Viechweg said, “but by the end I said ‘Count me in.’”

He is now devoted to the volunteer effort full time thanks to a layoff from his job late last year, which fortunately came with a good severance package.

He says he’s well known among his teammates as the “Mac guy” because he always has an iPod in his hand for transferring notes, finding files, “And to get myself to the office with some decent music,” he says.
He recently replaced his personal G3 with a G5 and says he’s a fan of iMovie®, Final Cut Express® and PhotoShop®. He says he also embraces Apple’s “Think Different” philosophy.

He recently replaced his personal G3 with a G5 and says he’s a fan of iMovie, Final Cut Express and

 That much is clear. According to the X Prize Foundation, the Toronto-based da Vinci Project is one of the most unconventional teams in the competition. It is built on the volunteer efforts of over 200 participants around the globe, including a group in St. Petersburg, Russia that provided the team’s computation of fluid dynamics, Viechweg said.

Because of their low budget, Viechweg said much of the team’s experience has felt like a David and Goliath competition against SpaceShipOne, the spacecraft funded by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen, and designed by aircraft developer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, LLC.

As Feeney tells his volunteers, however, “The lack of money is never an excuse to not do anything.”

And despite their differences and the high stakes, Viechweg says there is a friendly camaraderie between the da Vinci Project, the Scaled Composites team and about 11 other teams from countries around world including England, Israel and Romania, which got together for a meeting in California.

“They want to get the rest of us into space and so do we,” Viechweg says.

He said the da Vinci Project’s volunteer approach has been invaluable but also problematic, because it throws together people from all walks of life. While some of the volunteers have aerospace experience, others do not, and have to follow the group’s instructions to contribute in any way they can.