watch out NASA…ppl like me would like to take advantage of this 
A privately developed piloted rocket plane broke through Earth’s atmosphere Monday, claiming a spot in space history before heading back down to Earth.
The entire flight took only about an hour and 15 minutes, but it’s seen by some as the first step forward for private space exploration.
SpaceShipOne, a he plane with a pointed cone covered with small portholes, took off from Mojave Airport in California at about 6:45 a.m. PT Monday, carried by a specially-built jet called White Knight.
After climbing to an altitude of 15,240 metres, the craft was released from its mothership and fired its rockets for 80 seconds. The ship then coasted to the top of its trajectory into space, before dropping back into the atmosphere during a half-hour unpowered descent.
While at the apogee, SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill was weightless and could see our planet from outside the atmosphere. He described that sight as "almost a religious experience.‘’
"You can see the curvature of the Earth,‘’ he said. “You got a hell of a view from 60, 62 miles.”
"Beautiful sight, Mike,‘’ mission control said to Melvill as the craft slowly circled toward its landing, accompanied by three chase planes.
The objective was to reach the 100 kilometre mark, officially the beginning of space. But the exact altitude reached has yet to be confirmed by radar.
SpaceShipOne was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who would only describe the cost as being in excess of $20 million.
“It seems that if this scheme works … it promises to put space flight within the hands of ordinary citizens,” said Ivan Sememiuk of Discovery Channel. “Until now, it’s either been something that governments have undertaken or the space programs of other governments and in a few cases, multi-millionaires who’ve been able to buy seats from some of these government-operated space programs.”
Sememiuk said once such flights become more routine, the ticket price could drop to $10,000. “We’ll have to see if there’s a market for this, but I suspect there will be a fairly long list of people who would like to take such a flight,” he said.
SpaceShipOne is a leading contender in the latest space race, the Ansari X Prize – a $10 million contest to become the first privately-financed three-seat spacecraft to reach 62 miles and repeat the feat within two weeks. Two Canadian teams are also bidding for the prize.
While Monday’s flight is not part of the competition, Melvill told a news conference Sunday that he’s confident SpaceShipOne will go on to claim the prize.
“I’m ready to go, boy, I am ready to go, and we are going to win the X-Prize. Put your money on it,” said the 62-year-old Melvill, who previously set records for altitude and speed in certain classes of aircraft, and has logged more than 6,400 hours of flight time in 111 fixed-wing aircraft and seven helicopters.
The danger Melvill faces is unclear. “We don’t really know what the risks are because we have so little experience with this kind of spacecraft-aircraft configuration,” Sememiuk told Newsnet.
“Everything has been tested as thoroughly as it would in the space program, but certainly there are risks because they are pushing the envelope.”
SpaceShipOne was designed by Burt Rutan, whose Voyager aircraft made the first nonstop flight around the world without refueling in 1986.
His projects include the popular homebuilt VariEze light aircraft, new business planes, remotely piloted craft for defence and science, the 1988 America’s Cup wing sail, a crew-return vehicle for the International Space Station and an upcoming jet-powered plane for another world flight attempt.
Melvill is vice president-general manager at Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShipOne and White Knight.