Hi Sherief,
Karsten insisted that I have to run a local copy of torproject.org http://torproject.org using a web server while the automated script runs since we can't estimate or depend on the connection speed. The major blocker in this is that the browser redirects to https://torproject.org/ whenever I try to map 127.0.0.1 to torproject.org http://torproject.org (or www.torproject.org http://www.torproject.org) in my /etc/hosts file.
So you're trying to get http, but you get https, correct? Sounds like it might be the HSTS Preload list. See https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2012/11/01/preloading-hsts/ torproject.org is among the domains on Firefox's preload list: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manager/ssl/nsSTSPre...
I think you can turn off HSTS Preloading by creating an integer pref named "test.currentTimeOffsetSeconds", and setting it to 11491200. (Under about:config, right-click and choose "New > Integer".)
Arthur