Well, SpaceShipOne made it back to Earth now… If you don’t know what SpaceShipOne is, it is a privately build spaceship and it launched this morning, hit an altitude of 100km (the edge of space), and then came back down. This whole thing is being done in competition for the X-Prize. Looks like SpaceShipOne’s team will be the winners…they just have to relaunch and land safely again within 2 weeks of today and then they will have $10 Million more to play with. 🙂
More info on SpaceShipOne’s launch is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5261571/?GT1=3584
And more info on the X-Prize is here: http://www.xprize.org/ (NOTE: This link seems a bit slow…probably since the majority of the world is not realizing there was such a thing as the X-Prize and want to check it out.)
UPDATE: As Alfred pointed out, this was not an official attempt at the X-Prize. They weren’t trying for the prize, only for space…once they try, they will also have to have the weight of two passengers on board (either as real people OR equivalent weight of two average people). Still interesting to see and they are still as close as anyone has come towards the X-Prize in any event.