Here is what happens when SpaceShipOne makes its journey up into space. Before launch: SpaceShipOne is strapped to the underside of White Knight. White Knight takes off from a normal airplane runway.

Approximately one hour latter, they reach an altitude of 50 000 feet. White Knight then releases SpaceShipOne into a glide.

SpaceShipOne’s pilot then fires the hybrid rocket motor for approximately 80 seconds, and achieves a speed of Mach 3 in a vertical climb. During this process the pilot will experience G-forces three to four time the gravity of Earth.

SpaceShipOne then coasts up to it goal height of 100 km (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface. While at this altitude, the pilot (and passengers if any) will experience weightlessness for more then three minutes. They will see a thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon before they reenter the atmosphere and start decent.

For reentry, the pilot reconfigures SpaceShipOne’s wings and tail into a high-drag configuration. This is what replaces heavy and expensive computers to create a carefree reentry. The reconfiguration slows the ship down in the upper atmosphere by creating a very un-aerodynamic design. The ship is automatically aligned to its proper decent flight path. Upon re-entry, the pilot reconfigures the ship back to its original, glider, form. From here on, reentry takes approximately 15-20 minutes of gliding. They touch back down on the same runway that they took off from.