SpaceShipOne Reaches Target Altitude in $10M X Prize Flight

Byline: Mark Stencel

A civilian rocket plane racing straight up at more than three times the speed of sound made its third flight to space Monday morning, apparently achieving an altitude of more than 60 miles needed to win a private foundation's $10 million aerospace prize.

SpaceShipOne, which first flew to space in June and repeated the feat again last Wednesday, was carried aloft again Monday morning at 6:50 a.m. Pacific time (9:50 a.m. EDT) under the wings of a specially made twin-engine jet. After an hour-long flight to its mid-air launch point about 50,000 feet above California's high desert, the carrier plane dropped its stubby supersonic payload, which fired its rocket for less than a minute and half to power its ascent to its target altitude.

Civilian test pilot, Brian Binnie, spent several minutes of weightlessness at the edge of the atmosphere before returning to Earth. Straightening SpaceShipOne's wings -- which were folded at the flight's highest point to allow for a safer descent and reentry -- Binnie guided the rocket plane to a glider-like landing at the Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center.

Thousands of cheering spectators gathered at the commercial air field, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, lining the runway to greet the returning spacecraft.

SpaceShipOne was designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and his Mojave-based company, Scaled Composites LLC, to win the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million award offered by a private foundation to the first group of entrepreneurial space enthusiasts to build a mostly reusable spacecraft capable of carrying three people into suborbital space.

To win the prize, the spacecraft needs to carry a pilot and the equivalent weight of two other passengers to space twice in the same vehicle within two weeks.

Rutan's civilian space program was underwritten by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen, who has said he spent more than $20 million on the vehicle's development. More than two dozen other teams in a half-dozen countries have been vying for the X Prize, but SpaceShipOne has been the front-runner from the start.

After a series test flights, pilot Mike Melvill flew the spacecraft to space in June. Melvill also was the pilot last week, when SpaceShipOne made the first of its two qualifying flights for the X Prize.

Last week's flight reached an altitude of more than 337,000 feet, well beyond the contest's qualifying altitude. Initial data from Monday's flight suggested SpaceShipOne reached a new record altitude of 368,000 feet. Official word was expected to be announced at a news conference at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time (1:30 p.m. EDT), about three hours after SpaceShipOne's landing.

If the initial data is confirmed, Binnie will become the second civilian space pilot, after Melvill, to win the Federal Aviation Administration's new commercial astronaut wings, which were modeled after similar wings worn by NASA and military astronauts.

Binnie, 51, is a former Navy test pilot who flew SpaceShipOne's first powered test flight in the atmosphere. He is a graduate of the Navy's Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Md., and the Naval Aviation Safety School at Monterey, Calif. He also has an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering and a masters in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics from Brown University and a masters in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University.

A series of 30 unexpected rolls during last week's ascent caused some concern on the ground. But Rutan expressed confidence in the vehicle after the flight. In a message posted on his company's Web site this weekend, Rutan said most of the rolls occurred after the spacecraft had left the atmosphere and therefore there were virtually no aerodynamic forces to stop the unplanned motion.

"In other words, [the rolls] were more like space flight than they were like airplane flight," Rutan wrote. "Thus, Mike could not damp the motions with his aerodynamic flight controls."

Rutan said Melvill waited until the rocket was powered down before using the spacecraft's thrusters -- or reaction control system -- to stop the rolls, as the spacecraft's designers intended.

"While we did not plan the rolls, we did get valuable engineering data on how well our RCS system works in space to damp high angular rates," Rutan said.

The X Prize was inspired by the $25,000 award that Charles Lindbergh won for crossing the Atlantic nonstop in 1927. The contest was conceived by space enthusiasts as a way to launch a commercial space tourism business -- and SpaceShipOne appears to be on its way to doing that. Last week, British entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Group licensed the SpaceShipOne technology with the aim of launching paid tourist flights to suborbital space starting in 2007. Estimated ticket price: About $200,000.

Virgin also sponsored SpaceShipOne's two X Prize attempts, and the company's red logos now appears on the rocket plane's tail and side.

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