SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize yesterday.
The craft reached an altitude of 367,442 feet (69.6 miles), exceeding the 100-kilometer (62.5-miles) altitude required to win the X Prize.
Pilot Brian Binnie is the 434th human to have left this planet (temporarily).
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Update on December 1st 2004:
Time magazine has declared SpaceShipOne as its “Invention of the Year“
The Sky’s the Limit
Ingenious design. Entrepreneurial moxie. A world-changing vision of the future. The amazing SpaceShipOne has it all
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Space Ship One is a great achievement – no doubt about it. However, it is worthwhile to put it in prespective. SSO went up 100km and “fell” right back down again in a controlled descent. To stay in orbit around the earth at an altitude of 100 km. requires 32 times as much kinetic energy. That explains why the big difference between the takeoff and re-entry of the Space Shuttle compared with the flight of this little fiberglass marvel called Space Ship One. I’m not knocking the achievement – just pointing out that there needs to be a Y-Prize or a Z-Prize for whoever can first privately put a spacecraft in earth orbit.
Imagine the first private spaceship to land on the moon! What a moment that will be. (I wonder if the moon will make a nice vacation destination.)