SpaceShipOne
Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 3:35 amA new kind of spacecraft slung from an improbable high flyer could make history today. SpaceShipOne, carried into the stratosphere by a turbojet-powered sailplane called White Knight, will drop from its mothership, fire its rocket engines and soar to an altitude of more than 60 miles on a mixture of rubber and laughing gas.
If all goes well, SS-1 will become the first privately funded passenger-carrying spaceship to break out of the atmosphere and touch the edge of space. Its pilot will experience weightlessness for up to three minutes before changing the shape of the plane's wings and gliding back to the runway, just one hour and 30 minutes after takeoff.
It will burn a new kind of fuel, a mixture of hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene used in rubber tyres, and nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. This is much safer to handle than the highly explosive and toxic liquid and solid fuels used to put space shuttles into orbit. White Knight will take about an hour to soar with its passenger to about 50,000ft. It will then release SS-1. This will glide clear of its carrier and, after a few seconds, accelerate to 2,225mph - three times the speed of sound - and soar to sub-orbital space.
If all goes well, SS-1 will become the first privately funded passenger-carrying spaceship to break out of the atmosphere and touch the edge of space. Its pilot will experience weightlessness for up to three minutes before changing the shape of the plane's wings and gliding back to the runway, just one hour and 30 minutes after takeoff.
It will burn a new kind of fuel, a mixture of hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene used in rubber tyres, and nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. This is much safer to handle than the highly explosive and toxic liquid and solid fuels used to put space shuttles into orbit. White Knight will take about an hour to soar with its passenger to about 50,000ft. It will then release SS-1. This will glide clear of its carrier and, after a few seconds, accelerate to 2,225mph - three times the speed of sound - and soar to sub-orbital space.
Truly amazing isn't it, that we have come so far in aviation technology in just 100 years! We started with fragile planes made of wood and paper to aircraft that can break out through the atmosphere and beyond...Anyway here's the story from a Seattle news station: 
Probably one of the most ingenuitive aircraft designers of our age.