SpaceShipOne has launched from its mothership and is on its way into space in the first private manned space shot… more as the historic mission continues.
10:08 AM CST: SpaceShipOne has done it! The aircraft has reached the edge of space and 62 year-old test pilot Mike Melvill is taking the spacecraft for a landing at the Mohave Spaceport. SpaceShipOne uses a unique rotating wing assembly that allows it to enter the atmosphere like a shuttlecock in badminton.
10:16 AM CST: SpaceShipOne is nearly ready to land, gliding down to the runway. A test flight last year ended in the craft running off the runway due to a landing gear failure (fortunately craft and pilot were relatively unharmed). Let’s hope that problem doesn’t pop up again.
10:20 AM CST: SpaceShipOne is down with a sucessful landing! Congratulations to the Scaled Composites/XCOR Aerospace team for a successful and history-making test flight! This is a critical first step towards affordable manned spaceflight for all, and a new chapter in the history of private aviation.
SpaceShipOne, the first private manned spacecraft
This flight is not only an aviation first, but an important demonstration of the potential for commercial spaceflight. Even at over $20 million, the flight of SpaceShipOne was significantly cheaper than the experiments into cheap spaceflight being conducted by NASA – and unlike those vehicles SpaceShipOne is actually getting off the ground and into space. The government is simply too inefficient and risk averse for these kind – if the government had regulated conventional flight as they did spaceflight, we’d still be flying around in biplanes – if we were one of the lucky few who got to fly at all.
The future of space is with private enterprise, and SpaceShipOne is the first step into that future.
Space rocks! Well done, Space Captain Mike.
Hey its my inform. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to post something on it. JK. It really is phenomenal though, isn’t it?