Spaceship One...

[blufive]

...has flown again, this time to about 60km altitude. From the Scaled Composites website:

The third powered flight of SpaceShipOne. 55 seconds motor burn time.
[...]
Motor light off occurred 10 seconds after release and the vehicle boosted smoothly to 150,000 feet [~46km] and Mach 2.5. Subsequent coast to apogee of 211,400 feet [~64km]

It looks like the X-Prize may well be won this year.

[via The Register]

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

It has to be won this year, if it's to be won at all, as it expires on 1 January 2005.

Whether or not Scaled Composites wins the $10M (and I hope it does) it would be nice if a new challenge were to be laid down, for say $30M, for a feat to be achieved by 1 Jan 2010.

[blufive.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they went on the record a short while back saying they'd extend the timescale if it wasn't claimed by then.

And yes, it would be good to set another target. I'm not sure they could reasonably raise the bar to orbital (that's a huge step). Getting a large distance (say a few hundred or thousand miles) downrange seems possible though.