Monday is going to be soooo interesting...

Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites have produced and succesfully tested their Tier One - Private Manned Space Program.

Yes, they have built a spaceship, SpaceShipOne, that will be lauched into space on Monday from the Mojave Airport as the first commercial manned spacecraft in history. (Info on the Mojave Aitport Special Operations webpage). Oh, and the Mojave Airport (HMV) (known for it's aircraft "graveyard" (aka storage) is now known as "America's First Inland Spaceport " (Launch Site Operator License # LSO 04 009) as of yesterday.

Here's how their system works:

:

To reach space, a carrier aircraft, the White Knight, lifts SpaceShipOne from the runway. An hour later, after climbing to approximately 50,000 feet altitude just east of Mojave, the White Knight releases the spaceship into a glide. The spaceship pilot then fires his rocket motor for about 80 seconds, reaching Mach 3 in a vertical climb. During the pull-up and climb, the pilot encounters G-forces three to four times the gravity of the earth.

SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth. The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon. The pilot (actually a new astronaut!) then configures the craft’s wing and tail into a high-drag configuration. This provides a “care-free” atmospheric entry by slowing the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and automatically aligning it along the flight path. Upon re-entry, the pilot reconfigures the ship back to a normal glider, and then spends 15 to 20 minutes gliding back to earth, touching down like an airplane on the same runway from which he took off. The June flight will be flown solo, but SpaceShipOne is equipped with three seats and is designed for missions that include pilot and two passengers.

This is all for the Ansari X-Prize

The ANSARI X PRIZE is a $10,000,000 prize to jumpstart the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world. The $10 Million cash prize will be awarded to the first team that:

• Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
• Returns safely to Earth
• Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks