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SpaceShipOne

Scaled Composites, the winner of the ground-breaking Ansari X Prize, and the team that made the first historic, non-governmental manned-rocket flight to suborbital space, unveiled its vehicle on April 18, 2003.

SpaceShipOne is a three-person vehicle designed to be air-launched at an altitude of 15,240 meters (50,000 feet) from a carrier aircraft, called White Knight. On April 1, 2004, FAA/AST issued the first commercial RLV mission-specific launch license (LRLS 04-067) to Scaled. Including the September 29 and October 4 Ansari X Prize-winning flights, SpaceShipOne successfully completed five licensed flights in 2004.

On September 27, 2004, Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group announced Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company, will use the technology developed in the creation of SpaceShipOne to carry paying passengers into space. Virgin Galactic expects to launch its first flight around 2007, with full com-mercial service by the end of the decade. The spaceflight experience as currently envi-sioned will last approximately 6 days, including preflight training, social events, dinners with astro-nauts and guest speakers, and luxury accommodations. Flight into suborbital space will allow cus-tomers to experience the acceleration of a rocket flight, to feel weightlessness, and to see the Earth from space. In addition, 7-UP , the official beverage of the Ansari X Prize, announced plans to offer consumers the first free ticket into space aboard a Virgin Galactic craft.