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SpaceShipOne 'flies to success'

The rocket plane SpaceShipOne has shot to an altitude of more than 100km for the second time inside a week, putting it in line to claim the $10m X-Prize.

The vehicle raced straight up into the sky after being released from its carrier plane, White Knight, high above the Mojave Desert in California, US.

The rocketship, piloted by Brian Binnie, experienced none of the rolling seen on previous SpaceShipOne flights.

The Ansari X-Prize was initiated to galvanise private space travel.

It is administered by the Missouri-based X-Prize Foundation. It will give official confirmation that the terms of the competition have been met once the altitude, based on several sources, including from inside SpaceShipOne, has been verified.

MONDAY'S HISTORIC FLIGHT Take-off: 0647 local (1347GMT) Ignition: 0748 local (1448GMT) Landing 0814 local (1514 GMT) Altitude: 114.64km (368,000ft)

Preliminary radar data showed SpaceShipOne reached a peak altitude of 114.64km (368,000ft or 70.77 miles), which would break the record for a sub-orbital flight set by the experimental X-15 aircraft more than 40 years ago.

As SpaceShipOne touched down, its designer, aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, stood alongside British tycoon Richard Branson and X-prize chief Peter Diamandis. The men clapped and cheered and shook hands.

Diamandis's competition has acted as a spur for space travel in the same way air travel moved on after Charles Lindbergh made his solo trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927 to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

Funding for the X-Prize has come from the Ansari family of Dallas, which made its wealth in the telecommunications industry.

More than two dozen teams around the world are involved in the competition. Many of these teams, realising that SpaceShipOne would in all probability take the X-Prize on Monday, are already setting their sights on orbital flight.

This would enable paying passengers to experience hours or even days in space rather than the minutes offered on a sub-orbital vehicle such as SpaceShipOne.

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at October 4, 2004 03:59 PM