Joe Strout wrote:
In article ,
Hop David wrote:


http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...te_040602.html


Hot damn! The X-Prize will be won in less than three weeks. This will
be a historic occasion.

More details (from spacetoday.net):

"SpaceShipOne... will fly into space for the first time on Monday, June
21, the company announced Wednesday. SpaceShipOne will fly to an
altitude of at least 100 kilometers, a widely-accepted boundary of
space, on the flight. ... The pilot of SpaceShipOne on this flight will
be announced at a later date; Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill have both
flown SpaceShipOne on powered test flights previously. ... Wednesday's
announcement is a break in the tight veil of secrecy that has surrounded
the program during its development and previous test flights, which have
not been previously announced to the public. Scaled said the public will
be invited to witness this flight."

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From the Scaled Composites announcement:

"Based on the success of the June space flight attempt, SpaceShipOne
will later compete for the Ansari X Prize, an international competition
to create a reusable aircraft that can launch three passengers into
sub-orbital space, return them safely home, then repeat the launch
within two weeks with the same vehicle."

This is not an X-Prize flight. That will come later. Further, the
X-Prize requires 30 days advanced notice, not 21 days, or rather about
19 days. And the X-Prize committee has stated recently that they expect
60 days notice, so that puts the first flight at no earlier than August
21, based on an announcement on June 21, right after the test flight.