Oct. 4, 2004 — In a stunning show of technical proficiency, grace and showmanship, a privately built spaceship snared a $10 million prize in a race that reconnected ordinary people with a common dream to fly in space.

"That other space agency, the Boeings the Lockheeds, the naysayers — I think they're looking at each other now and saying, 'We're screwed,'" Burt Rutan, the designer of the ship that few to the edge of space on Monday, SpaceShipOne, told a cheering crowd.

After an hour climb beneath the belly of the jet carrier White Knight, spacecraft pilot Brian Binnie rocketed straight up into the clear blue skies over the Mojave Desert, cleanly winning not only the Ansari X Prize but also shattering a 42-year-old altitude record set by the X-15 hypersonic research program.

"You folks blew it away," X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis said after a ceremonial champagne soaking after the flight.

The X-15 rocket plane, jointly developed by NASA and the U.S. military, set an altitude record of 67 miles (354,200 feet or 108 kilometers) on an Aug. 22, 1963 flight.

Binnie's flight was SpaceShipOne's third venture beyond Earth's atmosphere. Following the debut June 21 test flight, Rutan's team at Mojave-based Scaled Composites staged two flights within five days, with passenger weight equivalent to three people and at altitudes that met or exceeded the 100 kilometer (62 mile) requirement needed to clinch the prize.

On Wednesday, during its first official flight, the craft rolled dozens of times at speeds of around 2,700 kilometers per hour (1,687 mph), corkscrewing through the sky. But there were no such problems on Monday.

"I thank God that I live in a country where this is possible," Binnie said as he waved an American flag that had just been unpacked from aboard SpaceShipOne.

Among the VIPs here Monday was the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Marion Blakey, who is responsible for regulating the spaceship. "It's a historic thing, the beginning of personal transportation into space," she said.

An hour after the landing, one of the contest sponsors, 7 Up, announced plans for a consumer promotion next year that would fly one person in space.

Rutan and his SpaceShipOne financier, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, already have a deal with Virgin Atlantic Airlways to produce a fleet of spaceplanes capable of ferrying five people at a time to suborbital altitudes.

Rutan pledged to build a craft that is at least 100 times safer than the ships astronauts and cosmonauts currently fly to space.

"You are witnessing the birth of the personal spaceflight revolution," Diamandis said. "All of us are going to get a chance to go (to space) in our lifetime."