By Lester Haines
Published Friday 14th May 2004 11:52 GMT
Burt Rutan and his SpaceShipOne team have taken another step towards claiming the $10m Ansari X-prize for the first private space vehicle.
Pilot Mike Melvill yesterday took the vehicle to 64km (211,000ft) above the Mojave desert. To claim the bounty, Rutan's Scaled Composites must fly the craft to 100km (329,000ft), return safely to earth and repeat the whole procedure within two weeks.
It now seems likely that SpaceShip One will be first past the post, thereby "jumpstarting the space tourism industry", as the X-prize website puts it. However, we reckon you'll have to have pretty deep pockets for a quick jaunt, despite what Scaled Composites claims:
