...of a licensed piloted spaceship this morning. Henry Vanderbilt, head of the Space Access Society, reports that Burt wasted no time in using his new launch license. Early reports of 105,000 feet and a thirty-five second burn time, with a safe landing.

More details when I find some--there's nothing at the Scaled site yet.

And speaking of Henry Vanderbilt, it's less than a couple weeks until the annual Space Access Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. For anyone interested in the emerging launch industry, this is a must-go event, and this year's should be particularly interesting with all of the X-Prize activity heating up.

[Update at 1:25 PM PDT]

That altitude is about twenty miles, or about a third of the distance required to win the X-Prize. I wonder how many more flights they plan to do envelope expansion before they do full altitude?

Also, Jim Benson should be pleased that he's now demonstrated two successful flights of the hybrid engine. Between this, and their new Air Force contract, SpaceDev seems to be on a roll.

[Update at 2:20 PM PDT]

Space.com has the story now. The first flight went supersonic. This one apparently went to Mach 2.

The "Henry Vanderbilt" link doesn't seem to be working currently. I did find some info at space.com, still not official, apparently hit Mach 2. Very exciting.

God Bless

I wonder how big of a performance margin does it have beyond X-Prize requirements. Could it eventually pull 116 miles as Freedom 7 did with one person on board ?