Private plane breaks sound barrier
 

When I saw this on the BBC, I had to check with a number of other places before posting, as it looks like a December 'fool'. The company, Scaled Composites, Inc. run by Burt Rutan have been ultra secretive. Read the various web sites and judge for yourself.

The sound barrier has been breached by a privately built rocket-plane, the first time it has been done without government help.

BBC
Scaled Composites
Space.com

It is usually the Brits who find the thing that went wrong and mention that larger than the main story. Interestingly, on this occasion, CNN have done that.
Test rocket flight ends in minor mishap
CNN

> ultra secretive

Well I guess they might have been about this test but isn't this their proposed entry for the X-prize? In which case won't it have to go a heck of a lot faster than the sound barrier eventually?

Yes it's in the X-Prize competiton.

Two other threads running on this:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=112541

and

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=112603

in Flight Testing.