It’s official! The Mojave Aerospace team led by the visionary Burt Rutan successfully completed its second launch attempt in a week, reaching an altitude of 368,000 feet and winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize. Of course, being a Branson fan, I was also particularly amused by the brilliant 11th-hour marketing move on Sir Richard’s part.   Note that the teams have been attempting an X Prize run for some time now, and yet, Branson brilliantly negotiated his way into some ingenius ancilliary marketing. From the CNN story:

Space ShipOne and its mother ship, the White Knight, featured a new paint job promoting Virgin Group, Richard Branson’s firm, which recently announced a deal to license the SpaceShipOne technology for a fleet of commercial spacecraft.

Especially interesting since it’s not even an exclusive licensing deal, so Branson just struck first and took the prize-winning-paintjob marketing prize. The article also ends with:

Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways, announced last Monday that he would invest $25 million in a new space venture, to be called Virgin Galactic. The project will license Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne technology for commercial suborbital flights starting at about $200,000.

Branson expects it could fly 3,000 people within five years.

"The development will also allow every country in the world to have their own astronauts rather than the privileged few," he said.

Note that billionaire Paul Allen put up $20-30 million to back this venture, but Branson got at least as much publicity out of it. Brilliant… as usual.

[ Does someone have a photo credit for this image?? ]