Fifty thousand feet over the Californian desert, the world is a vast expanse of blue with a drab carpet of khaki far, far below. Pilot Peter Siebold sets the craft’s trim to 18 degrees, pushes the stick forward, and counts down: “Three. Two. One. Release.”

The mother ship rises above us as we drift downward for a few seconds. Siebold pulls the yoke back and flips a toggle on the center console. Then: Bang! The hybrid rocket motor ignites and we’re a missile shooting toward the stars at more than three times the speed of sound. The sky becomes black. Then it gets weirder: Siebold flicks the yoke and the vehicle whips around 180 degrees. We’re still heading straight up, but the ship is flying backward. It’s like looking out the windshield of a car thаt’s floored in reverse, except my view is 1,500 miles in each direction, from the Sea of Cortez to San Francisco Bay.

My attention wanders for a split second and the verisimilitude evaporates – seeing walls and ceiling and my blue jeans jerks me back to reality. I’m not in the sky but in a hangar at the headquarters of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, sitting in a flight simulator for the firm’s latest spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo. If all goes well, SpaceShipTwo will be the commercial version of the radical rocket that won the $10 million X Prize in 2004 after it made two flights to the edge of space in a 14-day period. Richard Branson licensed the technology for Virgin Galactic, his space tourism gambit, which aims to start regular visits to the thermosphere by 2012.

After all of the prize money and media coverage, routine space tourism – this grand flight of human fancy – seems about to happen. SpaceShipTwo will be carried aloft by a mother ship, WhiteKnightTwo, which has been flying for nearly a year. The first SS2 is under construction and slated to begin flight tests in early 2010. Virgin has already sold $60 million in tickets to its first 300 passengers, аnd a taxpayer-funded spaceport is under construction near Las Cruces, New Mexico.



Circle the correct letter A, B, C, or D:

1. Carl Hoffman flew …

A. 50,000 feet over the California desert.

B. to the edge of space.

C. in a simulation of space travel.

D. at more than three times the speed of sound.



2. The pilot counted down …

A. before taking off from the ground.

B. before reaching 50,000 feet.

C. before separating from the mother ship.

D. before turning backwards.



3. The strangest part for him was …

A. when the sky turned black.

B. realizing that he was wearing jeans.

C. flying faster than sound.

D. flying in reverse.



4. SpaceShipTwo …

A. has been making flights into space since 2004.

B. will be the commercial version of a rocket that won a $10 million dollar prize.

C. will make flights for only a year.

D. cost $60 million dollars per flight.



5. The first SS2 …

A. was being made when the article was written.

B. has already been tested.

C. has sold out of tickets.

D. will cost $60 million dollars.