Historic Flight Made

SpaceShipOne, along with pilot Mike Melvill, soared 100 km above the Earth’s surface today, marking the first time a privately-funded and built space craft carrying a human being entered into orbit. This marks the beginnings of commercial, manned space flight, just as the Wright brothers did just over 100 years ago with air flight.

I woke up early this morning (6:30 am :???:) just to see the launch. It was interesting how this craft takes off with the assistance of a plane (Knight One)—very slowly albeit—separates at 50,000 feet, and then engages its rocket for a single burn to reach about mach 3 and the edge of space. An interesting approach.

This is huge! Given the deadline of the Ansari X Prize in the next year, we should be seeing more such flights soon. And lately, to think, I’ve been more sceptical of anything like this in my lifetime. I like to have my scepticism proved wrong.

Check out more with this Scaled Composites press release.