SpaceShipOne made it!

[geoschmo]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...est/index.html

Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the X Prize, the $10 million award intended to spur civilian spaceflight, said Rutan's vision would open the door for those with the same dream.

"This is a warm-up for the Ansari X Prize, but it's a historic moment for all Americans," he said. "[I've heard], 'If God wanted us to fly into space, he would have given us more money'. Hopefully, the technology demonstrated here today will lead to designs that are cheaper and easier."

Rutan said SpaceShipOne would compete for the X Prize once the causes behind the anomalies had been resolved.

"We will be looking at all our data," he said. "We'll make a decision next few days."

After that, preparations for an official X Prize flight are finalized will take 60 days.

[geoschmo]

And from the official X-Prize rules:

3. The flight vehicle must be flown twice within a 14-day period. Each flight must carry at least one person, to minimum altitude of 100 km (62 miles). The flight vehicle must be built with the capacity (weight and volume) to carry a minimum of 3 adults of height 188 cm (6 feet 2 inches) and weight 90 kg (198 pounds) each. Three people of this size or larger must be able to enter, occupy, and be fastened into the flight vehicle on Earth's surface prior to take-off, and equivalent balLast must be carried in-flight if the number of persons on-board during flight is less than 3 persons.

http://www.xprize.org/teams/guidelines.html

So, no, they don't have to have three people onboard, only be capable of flying with three people, and no, this flight won't count as one of the two flights needed for the X-Prize.

[Ragnarok]

One down, one to go.

Well, this is pretty exciting. SpaceShipOne has made their flight today, the first of 2 total flights within a weeks time.

[Timstone]

Please forgive me for saying this.
I've known of this project for quite some time now. I can't say I've followed it very closely. It's good to see it finaly comming to an end. I hope the Rutan wins. He's one of the coolest planebuilders around. Go Burt!
No flames so far, heh.

Here are the flames you've been waiting for.
This flimsy "spaceship", if you can call it that, is not very cool. It looks stupid, amateuristic and far tooo small. Okay, I like the design, it's better then the boeing 7's (they all look the same), but it still doesn't look like a military grade battlecruiser.
Yeah, I know it was a contest for CIVILIANS. But still. Why don't they just put the hands together (form a huge corporation) and develop something like an extension for the ISS. From there you can build, launch and recover spacecraft. Hell, you can even launch tourists in space (don't get too close to the copper bully). I think this contest has a too narrow field of vission. Their goal is too limited.

Please don't take offense of this message, this is just my vision.

[Intimidator]

Maybe you are right, but see it as pionneers work.
I saw in the newspaper that within one month they will put tourists in space with that craft.

So as soon the big companies notice that there is a market for it they will join asap !!

Inti,

[Timstone]

I surely hope so. Coz, that's one of the few reasons why companies are willing to invest in it.

[Randallw]

In the paper here for the Last 2 days they have stories about Richard Bransons new company "Virgin Galactic" which claims in 3 years they will start space trips for $A300,000 (which is about $US210,000) for a 4min flight. It has him holding up a model of SpaceShipOne with Virgin markings, and it says they are going to build a small fleet. One entrepenuer here (who runs an electronics store chain) says he'd be willing to do it but only if he gets to be the pilot (he's a bloke who once flew a helicopter across Antarctica)

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

[Kamog]

$210,000 US? All right, I'm going to go up in space and see the earth from space one day! That's my goal, to do that within my lifetime.

[Will]

Just an update, SpaceShipOne has made it again, and Scaled Composites now has the $10 million (US) X-Prize!

Space.com Story

[se5a]

Yup, not confermed yet though. but it got up there and landed safely.
looks like it went without a hitch to.