![\"SpaceShipOne](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/2\/27\/SpaceShipOneOnWhiteKnight.jpg\/1280px-SpaceShipOneOnWhiteKnight.jpg\")
The Prize That Changed Everything<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The Ansari X Prize was modelled explicitly on the Orteig Prize that Lindbergh had claimed in 1927: a fixed sum offered to the first private team to achieve a specific goal, with no government funding permitted. The goal was to build and fly a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying three people (or equivalent ballast) to 100 kilometres altitude \u2014 the internationally recognised boundary of space \u2014 twice within two weeks. The $10 million prize was announced in 1996. By 2004, 26 teams from seven countries had entered.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Burt Rutan’s team had an unusual approach. Rather than launching from the ground \u2014 which requires enormous fuel expenditure just to climb through the atmosphere \u2014 SpaceShipOne was air-launched from a specially designed mothership, White Knight, at 47,000 feet. From there, a hybrid rocket motor burned for 84 seconds, accelerating the spacecraft to Mach 3 and carrying it above the 100-kilometre K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line. The reentry used a “feathering” system: the tail section rotated to create drag, slowing the spacecraft automatically without requiring guidance \u2014 a design Rutan described as “carefree reentry.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n
\n\u201cI was thinking about how, in my lifetime, I went from dreaming about space to actually going to space. That is a profound change in what is possible.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne pilot, after the June 21, 2004 flight<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The X Prize flights were not smooth. On the first qualifying flight, June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne began rolling uncontrollably during the rocket burn \u2014 completing 29 rolls before the pilot, Mike Melvill, could stop it. He reached space, deployed the feathering mechanism, and landed safely. On the second qualifying flight, September 29, a trim malfunction caused similar uncommanded rolls. Pilot Brian Binnie corrected it. Both flights counted for the prize.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The second prize flight, October 4, was piloted by Binnie and went perfectly. He reached 112 kilometres \u2014 breaking the altitude record for a winged aircraft that had been held by the X-15 since 1963. SpaceShipOne landed to a crowd of 35,000 people who had come to the Mojave Desert to watch. The prize was claimed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Richard Branson had been watching. The day SpaceShipOne claimed the X Prize, Virgin Galactic was announced \u2014 a commercial space tourism company that would use a scaled-up version of SpaceShipOne to carry paying passengers to space. Twenty years later, Virgin Galactic had flown more than 800 people to space on its VSS Unity vehicle. Blue Origin, SpaceX, and dozens of smaller companies had entered the commercial space launch market.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n SpaceShipOne itself is now in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, hanging above the museum’s main hall alongside the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis and the Voyager. It is the youngest aircraft in that collection. It is also, in the arc of aviation history that began with Abbas ibn Firnas on a mountain above C\u00f3rdoba, perhaps the most consequential step since Kitty Hawk: the moment when space stopped being the exclusive territory of governments and became, at least in principle, available to anyone who could build the machine to get there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\nThe Rolls and the Near-Disasters<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The Industry It Started<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n