Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites gets an FAA licence for commercial spaceflight

[Bre901]

"The dream of commercial space flight has taken an important step towards reality with the granting of the first licence to a private company to launch people to a height of 100 kilometres.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded the license to Scaled Composites, a California-based company run by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, for a one-year period"

More on The New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994870) and The Beeb (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3610755.stm)

[-<M4v3r1ck>-]

I think Burt's defo the strongest contender at the moment...barring any surprise (and very secretive) attempts. They've been steadily building up to this and are one of the few companies who have more than CGI graphics on their websites :O

Good luck Mr. Rutan! :ok:

Exciting stuff,

Mav :)

[Bre901]

According to space.com (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spaceshipone_test_040408.html) SpaceshipOne has reached Mach 2 on its 2nd powered flight

However, on the Scaled Composites website (http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/New_Index/flight_data/flt_data.htm) only Mach 1.6 is mentionned.

Still quite impressing :ok: :ok: