The first privately financed rocket ship to enter space returned to Earth in California this afternoon. Chris Ayres, The Times’s Los Angeles correspondent, was in the Mojave desert to witness history being made.
“There was some tension when it was unclear whether or not they had achieved their goal [to go 62.5 miles into the atmosphere], but a few minutes before landing, the mission announcer made it public. There was clapping and cheering that lasted until the ship touched down here at 8.15am this morning local time about 90 minutes after it had taken off.
“The sense of relief was palpable. This has been the first manned commercial flight to go into space and the first non-governmental flight to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.
“It has clearly captured the public imagination and some of the biggest names in Hollywood are here including John Travolta, Steven Spielberg and William Shatner, of Star Trek fame.
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“Barron Hilton, the chairman of the Hilton Hotel empire, is also here, looking at the viability of the first hotel in space. He has publicly pledged to do it and believes it will be a reality.
“This flight differs from the first two space tourists, Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, who hitched a ride on the Russian Soyuz space capsule which was built with public money.
“This has been exclusively built with private money and is funded primarily by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world who is known for his love of guitars as much as his business nous.
“It has also been built for between $20 and $40 million - a fraction of what it would cost if it had been built with public money.
“The organisers say that 500,000 people watched the launch this morning at different vantage points around the desert, but I would be sceptical about that figure.
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“The SpaceShipOne team wanted to break the record and achieve the first manned commercial flight by going into space, but, as importantly, it takes them one step closer to winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize which is designed to spur on the development of space tourism.
“It will be rewarded to the first team which successfully flies three people into sub-orbital space and returns them home twice within the same week. Having capacity for three people could make such a spaceship viable.
“There are more than 20 different teams around the world vying for this prize, but I would think the SpaceShipOne team will win it fairly quickly following their success today.
“The people behind SpaceShipOne want to show that space tourism is commercially viable and could be done within as little as a decade.
“The success of this flight means that such a goal is definitely achievable and Nasa is interested in their project.
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“The next stage is to go into outer space proper rather than sub-orbital space. If they went higher, the problems of re-entry would be much greater. That is something they are going to have to start thinking about now.”