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BREAKING NEWS! Private Spaceship Completes Second Rocket-Powered Test Flight By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 02:25 pm ET 08 April 2004 UPDATE: Story first posted 1:40 p.m., April 8, 2004 The privately-backed SpaceShipOne suborbital rocket plane made its second powered flight today. Built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, the piloted vehicle was powered by a hybrid rocket motor to over 105,000 feet. The engine burned for 40 seconds, zipping to Mach 2, or two times the speed of sound, according to a source that witnessed the test flight high above Mojave, California skies. SpaceShipOne's second successful powered flight...

  '100 day countdown' to China's first astronaut   16:53 22 July 03   NewScientist.com news service   China is on course to become only the third nation ever to place a human in space, following press reports that the first crewed flight will take place in 100 days. A government source told the state-controlled news service Wen Wei Po that the launch would take place within this timeframe. No official date for launch has been set. There has already been some speculation that China's National Space Administration may target 1 October, the date on which the People's Republic of China was founded....

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 June 27 SpaceShipOne Credit: Scaled Composites Explanation: Slung below its equally innovative mothership dubbed White Knight, SpaceShipOne rides above planet Earth, photographed during a recent flight test. SpaceShipOne was designed and built by cutting-edge aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites to compete for the X Prize. The 10 million dollar X prize is open to private companies and requires the successful launch of a...

Speed of light broken with basic lab kit   10:03 16 September 02 Charles Choi   Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department. Scientists have sent light signals at faster-than-light speeds over the distances of a few metres for the last two decades - but only with the aid of complicated, expensive equipment. Now physicists at Middle Tennessee State University have broken that speed limit over distances of nearly 120 metres, using off-the-shelf equipment costing just $500. Jeremy Munday and...

Welcome to theNASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) ProjectPublic Information Site NEWS June 28, 2002: *** Funding in jeopardy for Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) *** This posting is to alert those researchers who were planning to submit a proposal to the Fall 2002 call for BPP proposals, that this solicitation must now be put on hold, pending resolution of future budgets.The budget for the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project is being cut.  Not only are all future years’ budgets in question, but also 21% of the funds already allocated for this year have been requested to be withdrawn for transfer to...

ICAN stands for Ion Compressed Antimatter Nuclear propulsion. Antimatter Spaceships BY STEFANO COLEDAN "Star Trek" fans may have to wait a few more centuries to embark on quick interstellar trips using wormholes and space-time warps as shortcuts. So while bypassing the cosmic abyss is still a subject of debate among physicists, some of them are already experimenting with a different, more practical approach: antimatter propulsion. If it works, unmanned spaceships could be flying throughout the solar system and interstellar space by the year 2040, says Gerald Smith, a retired Penn State University physics professor. And it's all possible under the...