A giant leap for backyard rocketeers

When SpaceShipOne split the clear California skies to cross the threshold of space Monday morning, the rumble that echoed down toward the Joshua trees of the Mojave Desert was no mere sonic boom. It was a seismic shift in the history of human exploration.

For this first privately funded trip to space, there was no wagon train hitched to SpaceShipOne's tail fins. On board that rocket-fueled carbon shuttlecock, there were no settlers prepared to colonize the heavens. But this much seems certain: Space is now open for business.

For two generations, the feats of space have been reserved for those test pilots and scientists who passed government muster. Now, the vapor trail of SpaceShipOne's hurtling ascent hangs in the air, an indelible cosmic path for anyone with the money and moxie to follow.

In many ways, the moment is more Wild West than Wilbur Wright, opening a new frontier for the geniuses and thrill seekers, businessmen and hucksters who have long followed pioneers to new lands and new markets.

"It's like the opening of the West," says Howard McCurdy, a spaceflight historian at American University in Washington. "Entrepreneurs followed in the wake of the oft government-funded explorers. There were a lot of characters and a lot of innovation."

By those measures, Burt Rutan certainly qualifies. Like the prospectors of old, the creator of SpaceShipOne has gone out seeking a new verse in the narrative of exploration - and a nice chunk of cash.

The money comes from the Ansari X Prize: A competition that will give $10 million to any organization that can build a machine that can reach the threshold of space - an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) - with three people, then do it again within two weeks. With only a pilot on board, this flight did not qualify, but Mr. Rutan hopes to win the prize later this summer.

It will come as no surprise. At the competition's opening event, Rutan boasted to the gathering that he already knew how to accomplish the feat "but I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do because I'm going to win it."

The idea became SpaceShipOne, and Monday just before 8 a.m. Pacific time, the diminutive space dart detached from its arachnoid mother ship and rocketed upward to where the sky turned black and the horizon bent with the curvature of the earth, making pilot Mike Melvill the first civilian astronaut.

"The colors were pretty staggering from up there," said Mr. Melvill, who also earned his wings, officially, as an astronaut. "It was almost a religious experience." Melvill said he could see the black expanse of outer space, the curvature of the earth and a broad swathe of the Southern California coast during his three and half minutes just beyond earth's atmosphere. He released a bag of M&Ms candies that floated around the cockpit.

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