A 62-year-old pilot was set Monday to make a historic trip into space by becoming the first human to fly a privately built ship beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Mike Melvill will command SpaceShipOne, blasting the rocket more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth's surface at more than three times the speed of sound, after detaching itself from a transport aircraft that will take off at around 6:30 a.m. (7.00 p.m., IST) in California's Mojave desert.
Slide Show: The world's first private spaceship!
"I'm flattered to have been chosen for this," said Melvill, a native of South Africa who flew the rocket to an altitude of 211,400 feet (64 kilometers) in a test flight May 13, breaking the record for a privately built craft.
"I'm hoping this will be a repetition, a little higher, a little faster," he said on Sunday.
The winged, bullet-shaped white ship was dreamed up by Burt Rutan, the 61-year-old chief of a company named Scaled Composites LLC, with financing from billionaire Paul Allen, a co-founder of software giant Microsoft. Allen said more than $20 million were put into the project.
"The flight is a milestone that may lead to a new space age," Rutan said.
"There is an enormous hunger to fly in space and not just to dream about it."
"The new private space entrepreneurs have a vision," he said. "We do want our children to go to other planets."
Rutan is also eyeing a $10-million prize to be awarded for the first privately funded space vehicle that can carry two passengers and a pilot to an altitude of 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) twice in two weeks.
The Ansari X Prize has been offered by the X Prize Foundation, a United States-based group, in a bid to encourage widespread space travel. About 25 teams from seven countries are said to be in contention.
"The X Prize is a significant return on the investment, but it is not the reason we are doing it," Rutan said.
In 1986, Rutan, a US engineer, worked on 'Voyager,' the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling.
SpaceShipOne weighs about three tonnes and is made of a graphite composite material.
Rutan designed the craft with broad wings and vertical stabilizers for re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
"The wings are folded to provide a shuttlecock or feather effect to give the ship extremely high drag for reentry," said Rutan, comparing the entry to that of a badminton birdie.
The craft operates on a hybrid motor that uses both solid and liquid rocket engines.
SpaceShipOne is scheduled to leave the ground attached to the 'White Knight,' a custom-designed transport aircraft, around 6:30 a.m. (7.00 p.m., IST).
After one hour of flying, at an altitude of 15 kilometers (48,000 feet), the 'Knight' will release SpaceShipOne, which will ignite its rocket engine and begin a vertical rise.
The rocket will burn for approximately 80 seconds, propelling the craft straight up at a speed of about 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) per hour, or about three and a half times the speed of sound, to a height of some 50 kilometers (160,000 feet) above the planet.
Once the rocket's fuel has been spent, the craft will continue upward for some three minutes to reach 104 kilometers (340,000 feet), a height at which it will lose speed like a spent bullet.
During this time, the pilot will feel weightless as do astronauts in space.
The zero-gravity effect, lasting three minutes, will continue until SpaceShipOne returns to about 60 kilometers (200,000 feet).
The pilot will gradually take control again and from 80,000 feet (25 kilometers) altitude, the craft will glide for about 17 minutes back to a landing at Edwards Air Base at between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. (11.00 p.m.-12.00 a.m., IST).
-- AFP