First Private, Manned Space Mission Successful

The private space plane was designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and paid for by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, who has said he spent more than $20 million on the project. Melvill is the general manager and a vice president at Rutan's California-based aviation firm, Scaled Composites LLC, which built SpaceShipOne.

"I had my heart in my throat while I was watching this," Allen, now a Seattle investor and philanthropist, said after the flight.

Rutan said the team that oversaw the mission from a control center at the airport were "extremely emotional" at key points in the flight, which Rutan conceived more than five years ago.

"It was amazing," Rutan said. "It looked like what it did in my mind in 1999."

Rutan proudly described the rocket plane's supersonic wing reconfiguration, which he said made his spacecraft the first vehicle that can have a "care-free reentry" into the Earth's atmosphere by making the return easier and safer.

An earlier Rutan-designed aircraft, the Voyager, captured the world's attention in 1986 when it became the first plane to circumnavigate the globe without refueling. (The historic two-person aircraft is now displayed near the main entrance of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.)

Melvill has flown SpaceShipOne in eight of its previous test flights, including its first rocket-powered test flight, which took it past the sound barrier in December -- another first for an entirely private aircraft.

Melvill also piloted SpaceShipOne in its third powered test flight a month ago, flying more than twice the speed of sound (Mach 2.5) and reaching an altitude of 211,400 feet -- a little less than two-thirds of the way to space.

Today's test flight was an important milestone for the rocket plane, which was designed to win the Ansari X Prize. Inspired by the $25,000 award that Charles Lindbergh won for crossing the Atlantic nonstop in 1927, the $10 million X Prize will go to the first private group that can fly three passengers on a suborbital flight aboard the same spacecraft twice within two weeks. More than two dozen groups in seven countries are competing for the prize, although no other group has yet flown a manned rocket like SpaceShipOne.

The ultimate goal is to foster a commercial manned spaceflight industry.

"In 12 to 15 years, we'll have suborbital space tourism that costs as much as a luxury cruise," Rutan told The Washington Post in a recent interview, "and very soon after that, you'll be able to spend your vacation in orbit."

Rutan said today that if all had gone as planned today SpaceShipOne's next mission would have been the first of its three-person flights toward winning the X Prize, but because of the control difficulties Melvill experienced he might consider another test flight first.

Today's suborbital flight was similar to NASA's first two manned Mercury space missions in 1961. It did not reach Earth orbit, where spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle can circle the Earth every 90 minutes. But Melvill's rocket plane was designed to return to Earth like a glider and land on a conventional runway and then fly again, much like NASA's winged, reusable shuttles, which have been grounded since the Columbia was destroyed as it reentered the atmosphere at the end of a mission more than 16 months ago.

Today's flight began at about 6:47 a.m. Pacific time, when SpaceShipOne's carrier aircraft -- a twin turbojet called White Knight, which also was designed and built by Rutan's company -- carried the rocket plane aloft to begin an hour-long flight to the spacecraft's mid-air launching point.

SpaceShipOne's hybrid rocket engine combines elements of solid- and liquid-fueled rockets, burning a combination of Nitrous Oxide (more commonly known to dental patients as laughing gas) and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (rubber) to propel the space plane to about three times the speed of sound.

Back on the ground, Melvill climbed atop his spacecraft and held his fists in the air.

Melvill said at points in the flight he was subjected to forces equal to about five times the gravity of the Earth. He rode without a spacesuit in a pressurized cockpit with a view through more than a dozen small portals designed to minimize structural loads and reduce the spacecraft's weight.

Booth reported from Mojave, Calif.