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SpaceShipOne 'flies to success'
The rocket plane SpaceShipOne has shot to an altitude of more than 100km for the second time inside a week, putting it in line to claim $10m X-Prize.
The vehicle raced straight up into the sky after being released from its carrier plane, White Knight, high above the Mojave Desert in California, US.
The plane, with test pilot Brian Binnie at the controls, experienced none of the rolling seen on previous flights.
The Ansari X-Prize was initiated to galvanise private space travel.
It was set up in 1996 to energise the private sector into developing rocket ships that could take the paying public into space.
Set up by Peter Diamandis, the multimillion-dollar award has acted as a spur for space travel in the same way air travel moved on after Charles Lindbergh made his solo trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927 to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize.
Funding for the X-Prize has come from the Ansari family of Dallas, which made its wealth in the telecommunications industry.
More than two dozen teams around the world are involved in the competition. Many of these teams, realising that SpaceShipOne is likely to take the X-Prize on Monday, are already setting their sights on orbital flight.
This would enable paying passengers to experience hours or even days in space rather than the minutes offered on a sub-orbital vehicle such as SpaceShipOne.
The rocket plane SpaceShipOne has shot to an altitude of more than 100km for the second time inside a week, putting it in line to claim $10m X-Prize.
The vehicle raced straight up into the sky after being released from its carrier plane, White Knight, high above the Mojave Desert in California, US.
The plane, with test pilot Brian Binnie at the controls, experienced none of the rolling seen on previous flights.
The Ansari X-Prize was initiated to galvanise private space travel.
It was set up in 1996 to energise the private sector into developing rocket ships that could take the paying public into space.
Set up by Peter Diamandis, the multimillion-dollar award has acted as a spur for space travel in the same way air travel moved on after Charles Lindbergh made his solo trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927 to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize.
Funding for the X-Prize has come from the Ansari family of Dallas, which made its wealth in the telecommunications industry.
More than two dozen teams around the world are involved in the competition. Many of these teams, realising that SpaceShipOne is likely to take the X-Prize on Monday, are already setting their sights on orbital flight.
This would enable paying passengers to experience hours or even days in space rather than the minutes offered on a sub-orbital vehicle such as SpaceShipOne.
