Sweet ride for rocket man

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE in Washington

One hundred kilometres above the sun-baked Mohave Desert, test pilot Mike Melvill could see the curvature of the Earth.

Seeing the planet from the edge of space was, he said, "almost a religious experience".

He then opened a packet of sweets, released them into the gravity-reduced cockpit and started the long glide back to Earth.

Melvill, 62, and his rocket plane SpaceShipOne made history yesterday when it became the first privately financed manned craft to reach space. Aircraft and pilot touched down in the Californian desert to applause and cheers.

SpaceShipOne was carried to about 13,800 metres, slung beneath another plane, White Knight. After an hour's climbing SpaceShipOne was released.

Melvill flipped a switch to arm his rocket engine and then a second switch to ignite it. The rocket fired, sending the craft to the top of its trajectory, confirmed later by radar at about 100km.

Back on the tarmac, Melvill enthused: "You got a hell of a view ... The flight was spectacular. Looking out that window, seeing the white clouds in the LA Basin, it looked like snow on the ground. As I got to the top I released a bag of M&Ms in the cockpit. It was amazing."

Melvill reported no real problems. He said, however, that during the flight he had heard a loud bang and wondered what it was. He pointed to a place at the rear of the spacecraft where a part of the structure had buckled, suggesting it may have been the source of the noise.

The journey to the edge of space was the latest part in a competition known as the Ansari X prize which is being held to encourage entrepreneurs and aviation specialists to develop ideas for making commercial space travel possible.

Up to 26 teams are vying for prize money of US$10 million ($16 million) that will be awarded to the developers who are the first to send a three-seater aircraft 100km into the skies and repeat the feat within two weeks.

The three-seat requirement demonstrates the capacity for paying customers while the quick turnaround between flights demonstrates reusability and reliability.

Both SpaceShipOne and White Knight were built by a team headed by aircraft designer Burt Rutan, and the project was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Allen said the project had cost in excess of US$20 million ($32 million), though he would not be more specific.

He recently told the New York Times: "As a child I used to read everything I could about space travel.

"When any of us were growing up, [there] is some kind of underlying dream - to pursue these things when we're older and have a chance to be involved."

- INDEPENDENT