A spacecraft that looks just like something out of Flash Gordon. Can Dale Arden and Emperor Ming be real?
Completing the first leg of a quest for a $10 million prize, a test pilot took a privately financed plane past the cusp of space on Wednesday morning in a flight that had equal measures of white-knuckle moments and triumph.
The rocket ship left the ground at 7:10 a.m. and reached a height unofficially reported at 337,500 feet (63.9 miles), well above its 328,000-foot goal set by the X Prize. That goal altitude, 100 kilometers above the Earth, is an arbitrary but widely accepted definition for the border of space. By 8:34, the squid-shaped craft had glided safely back to the runway.
But the best news of all, the pilot, Michael W. Melvill, is 63-years-old.