Science & Technology    Posted: June 21, 2004, 2:30 p.m. ET
Privately Funded Rocket Plane Reaches Outer Earth Atmosphere
The first privately funded spacecraft punched the outer edge of
the Earth's atmosphere before safely gliding back to Earth
Monday in front of a crowd gathered to watch the historic
flight.  SpaceShipOne, funded by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul
Allen and designed by Burt Ratan and a team at Scaled
Composites, took off aboard a custom-made carrier aircraft from
a runway in the Mojave Desert in California, about 100 miles
north of Los Angeles.  The rocket plane disconnected from the
carrier jet, the White Knight, at about 8 a.m. Pacific time at
its launch point, about 50,000 feet above the desert, according
to The Washington Post.  South African-born pilot Michael
Melvill, 62, then fired SpaceShipOne's rocket to begin the steep
ascent to his target altitude of 328,084 feet -- or 62 miles --
at the point considered to be the boundary between Earth's
atmosphere and outer space.  The rocket p