MOJAVE, California -- SpaceShipOne made history Monday and triumphed in the international Ansari X Prize race to launch the first privately built spacecraft. The reward for finishing first: $10 million. The innovative little space plane, developed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and built with $25 million in cash from billionaire Paul Allen, vaulted across the boundary of space 100 kilometers above the airport here, and kept on going.
With a new people's astronaut, Brian Binnie, at the controls, SpaceShipOne not only won the prize purse but also erased a 41-year-old altitude record for winged aircraft. Binnie soared to a radar-verified altitude of 367,442 feet. The old record of 354,300 feet was set in 1963 by an X-15. Peter Diamandis, who created the prize in 1996 and heads the X Prize Foundation, pumped his fists and high-fived with cheering, screaming spectators and teammates as he watched a giant video display showing SpaceShipOne rocketing into the black heavens above. "It's blowing the record books away," Diamandis shouted as he listened to mission control reports that put the ship's altitude first at 350,000 feet, then 364,000 and finally, though unofficially, at 368,000 feet, about 111 kilometers, or 70 miles, above Earth. "Today we make history," Diamandis said after the ship was back on the runway. "Today the winners are the people of the Earth. Today we go to the stars."
SpaceShipOne needed to reach 100 kilometers, or about 62.5 miles, twice within a two-week window to take the X Prize. The other principal requirement was to carry a pilot and either two passengers or their weight equivalent in ballast. Following its successful, if harrowing-looking, flight last week to 337,500 feet, Rutan's American Mojave Aerospace team had to get its ship across the edge of space one more time. Rutan chose Monday because it's the anniversary of the first flight of the space age: the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I on Oct. 4, 1957. At a press conference after the landing, Binnie said, "I wake up every morning and thank God I live in a country where all of this is possible. Where you have the Yankee ingenuity to roll up your sleeves, get a band of people who believe in something and go for it and make it happen. It doesn't happen anywhere else."
Last week, Rutan and Allen announced a deal to develop the new spacecraft for British transportation, entertainment and telecom magnate Richard Branson. The deal calls for Rutan to deliver five five-seated suborbital spacecraft on which Branson hopes to fly paying customers as soon as 2007. The venture, dubbed Virgin Galactic, will charge about $208,000 a ticket. "Thanks to Sir Richard Branson, we have not only a milestone but a challenge," Rutan said. "We have just begun." Another episode in SpaceShipOne's X Prize saga is not so remote. Diamandis announced that the $10 million check for the prize-winning flights will be formally presented, along with what he called "a beautiful 6-foot-tall trophy," in St. Louis on Nov. 6. The St. Louis business community, mindful of the city's connection with Charles Lindbergh's historic solo transatlantic flight in 1927, invited Diamandis to set up shop there after he launched the X Prize organization. The prize was intended to do just what it looks like it's doing -- spur the development of a new generation of aircraft for space tourism.
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