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SpaceShipOne Rockets To 68,000 Feet

Posted by simoniker on from the that's-quite-high dept.

ehartwell writes "According to Space.com, Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne flew its first rocket-powered flight today, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' 12-second first flight. SpaceShipOne's engine burned for 15 seconds, pushing it to Mach 1.2 (930 mph) and a peak altitude of 68,000 feet. To win the X-Prize they need to reach 330,000 feet twice within 2 weeks."

6 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. John Carmack ? by EmCeeHawking · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like someone needs to stop spending so much time tweaking the Doom3 Engine and get on the stick. Sundays and Tuesdays aren't going to be enough to beat a fulltime effort.

  2. SpaceShipOne? by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 3, Funny

    What, did it have the president on board? Please tell me it broke up upon re-entry...

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
  3. No kidding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Duke Nukem: Forever team has been working on a fusion reactor in their spare time. We can all see what that did to that project's timeline.

  4. Frequent Flyer Miles by LeiGong · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's great that we're gonna finally be able eventually travel to the moon and all... but all of my frequent flyer miles are now freakin' useless... It took me forever save up these thousands of miles with Delta too. I'm still 230,000 miles sort. Dang.

  5. Re:50 years from now... by fiftyLou · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ability to educate one's self should be the greatest lesson of a compulsary education.

    Agreed. With the ability to dress one's self coming a close second.

  6. Re:who makes this component at armadillo ... by mrjah · · Score: 5, Funny

    "ESTES"

    They use D motors.