SpaceShipOne halfway to X-Prize
SpaceShipOne, the privately built manned rocket aiming to claim the 10 million USD X-Prize, has completed the first of two qualifying flights, and is scheduled to attempt the winning second flight on 4 October, despite some technical concerns. On 29 September, pilot Mike Melville blasted SpaceShipOne to an altitude of 103 kilometres above the Mojave Desert in California before returning safely to Earth. The flight did not go entirely according to plan, however, as the rocket made around 20 unplanned barrel rolls at the top of its climb. 'Did I plan the roll? I'd like to say I did, but I didn't,' admitted Mr Melville. 'You're extremely busy at that point. Probably I stepped on something too quickly and caused the roll, but it's nice to do a roll at the top of the climb.' The atmosphere is so thin at such high altitudes that the pilot had to cut short the rocket's engine burn and use a specially designed system of air jets to stop the rolling. Flight control had asked Mr Melville to switch the engine off earlier, when it first became aware of the problem, but the pilot had held on until he knew SpaceShipOne would surpass the 100 kilometre qualifying altitude for the X-Prize. Despite the pilot's relaxed attitude to the incident, Burt Rutan, president of the company that designed SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites, revealed that since its first flight the rocket has been prone to rolling when exposed to wind, and that engineers would try to fix the problem by modifying the design of subsequent models. In order to claim the X-Prize, SpaceShipOne will have to repeat its journey before 13 October, and Mr Rutan confirmed that a second flight would be attempted on 4 October.