Spaceship One

 

Commercial spaceflight has been in the interest of humans since the first probes sent to space, an interest that has made its way into most sci-fi shows, games and books. This dream is becoming reality, thanks to a small craft known as a spaceplane called Spaceship One.

Spaceship One was the first commercial spaceflight and also the first private spacecraft. It was a joint operation between Paul Allan, who funded the entire project, and Burt Rutan and his aviation company, Scaled Composites. Spaceship One is not a true spaceship, as it only achieves low orbit for about five minutes. It cannot achieve this low orbit by its self and is instead carried into the air by a jet built specifically for the task called the White Knight. White Knight was also used to train the pilots of Spaceship One

In 2004 Spaceship One was awarded the Ansari X prize for being the first commercial spacecraft to make two spaceflights in a time period of two weeks. The prize was ten million dollars, but this is only two fifths of what it cost to actually build the craft. It was piloted by Mike Melvill.

Another flight was supposed to be made, but Rutan didn’t want to risk damaging the craft. It was later taken to the Oshkosh EAA airshow in Wisconsin in 2005, and afterwards to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Afterwards, In a co-venture between Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, Spaceship two was planned to be used for “Space tourism”. Five of these model craft are being, or have already been constructed, the first one completed being, or to be called the VSS Enterprise. These craft will be double the size of Spaceship one. It is also possible that a Spaceship Three is under discussion.

The dream of commercial spaceflight is finally a reality, for anyone who has 200,000 dollars. This is pretty expensive, but reasonable for this point in time, when the only other way to go to space is by becoming an astronaut. The price is bound to come down eventually. Spaceship One was an important spacecraft in modern history, depending on point of view. It’s pretty much certain there are people who don’t think much of Spaceship Ones achievements. Nonetheless, Spaceship One helped open doorways into what some might call the future. In a way, Spaceship One started to bridge the gap between science fiction and science fact.