Makiní history
Ted Balaker
June 21, 2004, 5:24pm
Private space travel has arrived:
A rocket powered by a mixture of rubber and laughing gas soared 328,491 feet Monday to become the first privately funded vehicle to carry a person into space.
Piloted by 63-year-old Michael W. Melvill, SpaceShipOne climbed into the record books by rising to new heights.
With the suborbital flight that included 3 1/2 minutes of weightlessness, Melvill became the first human being to reach space – defined as about 62 miles above Earth – without any government funding or help, a feat that space enthusiasts said could usher in a new age of commercial space travel.