Rocket Man Steve Bennett has unveiled his new space capsule that he hopes will make him the first man to pilot a privately developed spacecraft into space and back. As ManchesterOnline reports, the 200 kg single-seater Nova II capsule, built by his company Starchaser Industries Ltd., will be shipped to the U.S. on Monday, where it will be fitted with a parachute system and, weeks later, dropped from a C-123K transport aircraft at an altitude of 14,000 feet over the Red Lake Drop Zone in Arizona, reaching speeds up to 150 mph–with Steve inside. Steve will use a three parachutes to balance and steer the craft to the runway just like a glider, in a journey that will take around 15 minutes.

“I used to be scared of heights,” Bennett told Annanova, “but after skydiving I got out of that. I am just looking forward to the next buzz. I have dreamed about flying in one of these rockets since I was five or six years old, since I saw the Americans walk on the moon. I think about it every single day.”

If the drop tests are successful, the rocket will be fitted with five three-tonne engines, to be tested next week. Eventually Steve and his team hope to launch the Nova rocket from a site in Australia, where it should reach 30,000 feet in less than a minute. “We have proved the design of the rocket and capsule both on paper and in the air. It’s now time to show the world that we mean business and move on to the manned phase,” Steve told Reuters. Once Nova is launched, Steve and his team will develop a three-seater craft called Thunderbird in a bid to win the X-Prize, launched in 1996 by the X-Prize Foundation to open space tourism to the public-at-large. As SPACE.com reports, to be eligible for the $10-million prize, you must send at least one person (but have the capacity to send three) to a height of 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) and return safely. The mission must be repeated within two weeks. The competition has drawn contestants from seven nations, including Argentina, Canada, England, Israel, Romania, Russia and the United States.

Starchaser Industries is confident that they’ll win that $10 million when Thunderbird blasts off into the history books in 2005.