Eight Years Ago Today….

Posted
by
Doug Messier
on June 21, 2012, at 5:15 am
in News
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Comments: 3 responses
3 Comments

SpaceShipOne lands at the Mojave Air and Space Port after its historic spaceflight on June 21, 2004. (Credit: Ian Kluft)

Mike Melvill flew SpaceShipOne into space and history on this date in 2004. Melvill piloted the small space plane to an altitude of 100.124 km (62.2 miles) on a flight lasting 24 minutes and 5 seconds. Melvill was the first pilot to fly a privately-built aircraft into space. Thousands gathered at the Mojave Air and Space Port to watch this historic flight. After the flight, Melvill climbed aboard his craft and held up a sign that read, “SpaceShipOne, Government Zero.”

It was the fourth powered flight for the Scaled Composites vehicle, which was funded by billionaire Paul Allen. The space plane would fly two more times, in September and October 2004, to capture the $10 million Ansari X Prize. SpaceShipOne was then retired and shipped to the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Sir Richard Branson and his company, Virgin Galactic, subsequently licensed the technology and hired Scaled Composites to develop a pair of successor vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhitKnightTwo carrier aircraft. Development and testing is ongoing in Mojave.

WhiteKnight with SpaceShipOne on the taxiway prior to the first commercial spaceflight. I'm on the right filming. To my left, Eric Dahlstrom and Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom. (Credit: John Criswick)

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  • Michael Turner

    “SpaceShipOne, Government Zero”? I missed that one, the first time around. It makes no sense anyway — how was government was supposed to score in any such contest, given that the X Prize was specifically for a non-governmental feat? If you count government suborbital spaceplane efforts, the X-15 had scored two flights over 100km, almost 30 years previous. The X-Prize flights basically evened up the score, while eking out a new altitude record. And when you consider how much of the tech that went into Spaceshipone was developed with government money, it hardly seems fair.

    That said: the X Prize being awarded was one of two events that I credit for fanning the flames of my interest in space travel. The other was Dennis Tito’s flight to ISS. I didn’t expect either of these to actually come off. Almost a decade later, the needle isn’t quite threaded yet: orbital space travel, on privately funded craft, to privately funded stations. But these events held out promise that the day could finally come, and for that, I was glad.

  • http://exoscientist.blogspot.com Robert Clark

    Hard to believe it’s been 8 years already.
    Reports that commercial flights will begin by next year.

    Bob Clark

  • Paul451

    And yet they haven’t flown since.

    I can understand wanting to upgrade to SS2. But surely you fly what you have to keep the money flowing and customers interested? Eight years.

    (SpaceX didn’t shut down Falcon 1 until all their customers switched to F9 slots.)