SpaceShipOne Wins X Prize!

Well, it's official: SpaceShipOne has won the Ansari X Prize. Additional details can be had from this CNN article.

Although SpaceShipOne is a suborbital spacecraft, this is a major achievement and it is an important step towards making the old "space age" predictions finally come true. The most important thing, in my view, is that this will foster private space development which is the result the X Prize founders were hoping for. Richard Branson (the chairman of Virgin Atlantic) is going to start Virgin Galactic using the SpaceShipOne design to provide tourism flights starting in 2007 which should cost somewhere around $200,000 per seat.