“In ten years everyone will know that if they want to, they can go to space,” Burt Rutan said this morning on NBC’s Today Show. His confidence is based on winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize yesterday with SpaceShipOne’s second successful shot into space. The first privately-built manned spacecraft soared over the California Mojave desert, passing the boundary of “space” at 62 miles by seven more.

Rutan designed the ship; Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen financed it. Another encouragement for Rutan’s prediction is Richard Branson’s order for five passenger ships to begin offering flights in 2007. Tickets may cost as much as $200,000. All that for a trip to nowhere, for these will be only suborbital flights. Just one of many of the news articles about the flight is in USA Today.

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