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excerpted from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/28/MNG9990
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Richard Branson, the British tycoon known for daredevil exploits in a speedboat, a hot-air balloon and an amphibious car, wants to take a giant leap into the final frontier -- and to give a lift out of this world to similarly intrepid paying passengers.

Branson, 54, is launching the first commercial space service, Virgin Galactic, which will start building its first aircraft, the VSS Enterprise, next year and could blast off from California's Mojave Desert with passengers aboard as soon as 2007. The airline magnate plans to be on the inaugural flight.

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The British mogul licensed the spacecraft technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the third- richest man in the world. Mojave has bankrolled pioneering aviation designer Burt Rutan's creation of SpaceShipOne, which in June became the first privately financed manned spacecraft to successfully complete a flight. Rutan also invented the Voyager, the first plane able to travel around the world without refueling.

The fish-shaped SpaceShipOne is slated to take off from the Mojave Desert again Wednesday in a bid to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, designed to jump-start space tourism by rewarding the first team that can build and launch a spaceship able to carry three people to the boundary of space, return safely and repeat the feat within two weeks. If all goes well, SpaceShipOne, which will carry two human-weight dummies instead of passengers, will fly again Oct. 4.

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excerpted from Yahoo! News http://tinyurl.com/3suye
During its 81-minute flight, SpaceShipOne climbed to 337,500 feet — nearly 10,000 feet above its target, said Gregg Maryniak, executive director of the X Prize Foundation. The craft made more than two dozen unexpected rolls as the fat fuselage and spindly white wings shot skyward.

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