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SpaceShipOne did it! Its completed the first flight and is now half way on its trip to the getting the 10 million dollar Ansari X-prize!!! Not only that, but its makers are already talking about using it to start up a space tourism industry!! Granted the tickets are still gonna cost $200,000 but thats 100 times less than they used to be (in the past they've been more in the area of $20 million!)
quote: Completing the first leg of a quest for a $10 million prize, a test pilot took a privately financed plane past the cusp of space on Wednesday morning in a flight that had equal measures of white-knuckle moments and triumph.
The rocket ship left the ground at 7:10 a.m. and reached a height unofficially reported at 337,500 feet (63.9 miles), well above its 328,000-foot goal set by the X Prize. That goal altitude, 100 kilometers above the Earth, is an arbitrary but widely accepted definition for the border of space. By 8:34, the squid-shaped craft had glided safely back to the runway.
The plane, called SpaceShipOne, was first lofted to 50,000 feet by a carrier craft called White Knight, which then released it so that it could fire its engine and reach its maximum altitude. Both craft were created by the aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financed by Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft.
quote: The era of private spaceflight may actually have begun with the announcement on Monday that Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Airlines, would build a new space tourism company based on the technologies developed by Mr. Rutan and Mr. Allen, with flights scheduled to begin in 2007 with an initial price of about $200,000 per ticket.
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The Science Channel will have live coverage of the launch beginning at 9:00 am Eastern Daylight time. I'll be watching with a a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I remember watching the Shuttle Challenger explode. Posts: 4569 | Registered: Dec 2003
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