For Sale: a Jet, Under $1 Million

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

If Vern Raburn has his way, you'll need a slightly larger garage. Raburn's new vehicle is 33 ft. long and 11 ft. high--not much larger than that SUV you've got wedged in there now, right? But the newcomer has a definite advantage: its top speed is 408 m.p.h.

Say hello to Baby Jet. Raburn, a longtime amateur aviator who got bored with his life as a computer-products developer, wants to produce the world's first affordable--at least to some--personal jet. Raburn intends to price his twin-engine, five-seat Eclipse 500 at a mere $837,500. The popular Cessna CJ1, by comparison, costs more than $3.7 million. "If they really can stay under $1 million, they will set the biz-jet market on its ear," says Warren Morningstar, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Raburn has already raised $120 million for the Eclipse. A test version should be flying by 2003, followed soon by the real thing. "The Eclipse will change the way air transport works," says Raburn, 51. "You will think about using your Eclipse almost as quickly as you use a taxi." Raburn, the son of a McDonnell Douglas engineer, started flying at 17 and later became the 18th employee hired by Microsoft. He left the company in 1982, then worked at Lotus Development Corp. and for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It was when he met famed enginemaker Sam Williams in the mid-1990s that the dream for Eclipse was hatched.

Raburn calls the Eclipse "a disruptive technology" in an industry dominated by a few big firms. The killer app of the Eclipse is its tiny engine. Williams, who designed engines for cruise missiles, has been working on reducing engine size for decades. The Eclipse engine, the EJ22, is tiny in airplane terms--85 lbs. (the CJ1 weighs 450 lbs.) and about 14 in. in diameter. But it produces a powerful 770 lbs. of thrust (CJ1: 1,900 lbs.). That's a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than any commercial turbofan engine, and it is the smallest, quietest and lightest jet engine made for use in a civilian aircraft.

Not surprisingly, some critics think this set of aeronautical physics is pi in the sky. "There will have to be some miracles inside the EJ22," wrote Mac McClellan, a columnist for Flying magazine. But Raburn welcomes the skeptics. He even wears a WCSYC button on his lapel. "It stands for 'We Couldn't, So You Can't,'" says Raburn. "I've seen that mentality before. I worked in the software business. Remember what small personal computers did to those huge, lumbering mainframes?" Point taken. Is your driveway wide enough?

--By Sally B. Donnelly

TIME.com ON AOL To meet more Innovators and nominate your own candidates, visit us at time.com/innovators