History is Made! On the special day of June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was the first privately owned aircraft to enter outer space. Test pilot Michael Melvill took SpaceShipOne 62.5 miles or 100 km above Earth.  Flying at this altitude officially makes Melvill an astronaut. SpaceShipOne and the jet the White Knight took off at 9:45 EST, and SpaceShipOne was deattached from White Knight at 50,000 feet. After a few seconds of falling, Melvill fired SpaceShipOne’s rocket motor for 80 seconds, sending him into space for 3 minutes. SpaceShipOne then landed safely an hour after it took off.

 

 

Just after 8 in the morning,  CNN reported that SpaceShip One reached an altitude of 368,000 feet which was -well above the 328,000 feet, or 100 km, minimum altitude required to win the prize.

The second voyage of Mr. Paul Allen's Mojave Aerospace Ventures craft was an attempt to reach 100km, or 62 miles, in altitude, considered the edge of Earth and space. The craft first broke the 100km mark Wednesday, completing the first of 2 steps needed to win the prize.

The Ansari X Prize was started in 1996 to stimulate commercial space tourism. The prize includes $10 million dollars for the 1st team to send a spacecraft to 100 km, land it and repeat the trip within 2 weeks.

About 25 other teams from 6 countries are trying to build their own spacecrafts but have not advanced as quickly as Mojave. Some concepts range from a design after the Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket to launching a spacecraft from a huge hot air balloon.

As earlier reported, questions about a 2nd launch arose after Space Ship One went into an uncontrollable spin moments before it reached its apex during the first launch. Members of the team were unable to explain the "roll" at first and could not immediately determine whether it was caused by a design flaw or pilot error.

In a statement on Saturday, SpaceShip One's designer, Mr. Burt Rutan, explained that the rolls were effects from reaching the space barrier and not from common atmospheric effects, such as wind. For that reason, the pilot Mr. Mike Melvill could not immediately control the spacecraft with controls that are more suited for air planes.

Despite the stomach-wrenching roll, SpaceShip One could become another step toward sending regular civilian people into space. Last week,  Richard Branson said he would begin offering space flights in 2007 with crafts based on SpaceShip One's design. Travelers will pay Virgin Galactic, as Branson's business is named, nearly $ 200,000 to fly out of Earth's atmosphere and experience the weightlessness of space.  This would be the first civilian space flights.

Mr. Rutan, who created the idea of SpaceShip One, used aircraft concepts in designing the spacecraft. A larger aircraft, called the White Knight, carries the smaller SpaceShip One under its large bottombelly and uses rockets to thrust the tandem to an altitude of about 14 km. Once it reaches that height, SpaceShip One detaches, fires up its engine and then rockets up toward the necessary altitude.

SpaceShip One then falls back to Earth by changing its wing configuration into feather mode, in which its wings fold to act like a kite. When the craft falls to a certain altitude in the Earth's atmosphere, the wings return to their original shape, and SpaceShip One glides back to the runway.

SpaceShipOne was an experimental air-launched suborbital spaceplane that used a hybrid rocket motor. The design featured a unique "feathering" reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail  folded up along a hinge running the length of the wing.  This increased drag while remaining stable. The achievements of SpaceShip One are more comparable to the X15 than orbiting spacecraft like the Space Shuttle. Accelerating a spacecraft to orbital speed requires more than 30 times as much energy as lifting it to 100 km^[

SpaceShip One was developed by Scaled Composites, Mr. Burt Rutan's aviation company, in their Tier One program, without government funding. On June 21 2004, it made the first privately funded human spaceflight, and on October 4th, it won the $10-million Ansari X Prize, by reaching 100 km in altitude twice in a two-week period with the same of three people on board, with no more than 10 % of the non fuel weight of the spacecraft replaced between flights. Development costs were estimated to be around  $25 million, all paid by Paul Allen.

New funding comes from British tycoon Mr. Richard Branson, who is to fund the successor SpaceShip Two for his new company Virgin Galactic through a $ 21 million US deal. During its testing regime, SpaceShip One set a number of important recoreds, including first privately funded aircraft to exceed Mach2 and Mach3, first privately funded spacecraft to exceed 100km altitude and first privately funded reusable spacecraft.

SpaceShip One is registered with the FAA as N328KF. 'N' is the prefix for US-registered aircraft; '328KF' was chosen by Scaled Composites to stand for 328 feet (about 100 km, the officially designated edge of space). The original choice of registry number, N100 KM, was already taken. N328K F is registered as a glider, reflecting the fact that most of its independent flight is unpowered.

SpaceShip One's first flight, 01C, was an unmanned captive carry flight test on May 20, 2003. Glide tests followed, starting with flight 03G on August 7 2003. Its first powered flight, flight 11 P, was made on December 17 2003, the 100 th anniversary of the first powered flight.

On April 1 2004, Scaled Composites received the first license for suborbital rocket flights to be issued by the US Department of Transportation. This license permitted the company to conduct powered test flights over the course of one year. On June 17 2004, Mojave Airport reclassified itself (part-time) as the Mojave Spaceport.

Flight 15 P on June 21 2004, was SpaceShip One's first spaceflight, and the first privately funded human spaceflight. Ansari X Prize flights followed, with flight 17P on October 4 2004, winning the prize.

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