Private spaceship sets altitude record
Aircraft designer Burt Rutan and his firm Scaled Composites took a giant leap early Thursday toward becoming the first private company to send a person into space.
Scaled Composites, funded by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen, set a new civilian altitude record of 40 miles in a craft called SpaceShipOne during a test flight above California's Mojave Desert.
The firm is one of 24 companies from several countries competing for the $10 million X Prize, which will go to the first privately funded group to send three people on a 62.5-mile-high suborbital flight and repeat the feat within two weeks using the same vehicle.
The nonprofit X Prize Foundation is sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century.
The prize is fully funded through January 1, 2005, according to the foundation's Web site.
The Rutan-designed White Knight aircraft, with SpaceShipOne attached to its belly, rolled down the Mojave Airport runway at 7:41 a.m. PT Thursday.
The strangely shaped White Knight carried SpaceShipOne to 50,000 feet. Then 50 minutes after takeoff, the spacecraft separated from White Knight and rocketed into the stratosphere.
