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SpaceShipOne ranks among the world's first spaceplanes in the first 50 years of human spaceflight, with the North American X-15, Space Shuttle, Buran, and Boeing X-37. SpaceShipOne is the second spaceplane to have launched from a mother ship, preceded only by the North American X-15.
The White Knight and SpaceShipOne were designed by Burt Rutan and manufactured by Scaled Composites, a private company founded by Rutan in 1982. On three separate flights in 2004, White Knight conducted SpaceShipOne into flight, and SpaceShipOne then performed a sub-orbital spaceflight, becoming the first private craft to reach space.
SpaceShipOne flight 16P on September 29, 2004 and SpaceShipOne flight 17P on October 4, 2004 were successful competitive flights, winning the X Prize. The Tier One program run by Scaled Composites concluded after the retirement of SpaceShipOne, transitioning to a successor program for customer Virgin Galactic .
Although not a Virgin Galactic launcher, SpaceShipOne was the direct predecessor of the Virgin Galactic vehicles, and served to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. SpaceShipOne was an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (900 m/s), using a hybrid rocket ...
Mike Melvill displayed great excitement, waving to the crowd while standing on top of SpaceShipOne. He also held up a sign reading "SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero," given to him by a spectator - an apparent reference to the then-ongoing suspension of Space Shuttle flight operations following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-107.
At 08:15 PDT at an altitude of 47,900 feet (14.6 km) and a speed of 112 knots (58 m/s), SpaceShipOne was released from White Knight. After gliding to 44,400 feet (13.5 km) and accelerating to Mach 0.55, the rocket was lit for a 15 second burn. Nine seconds into the burn, SpaceShipOne exceeded the speed of sound.
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Flight 17P of SpaceShipOne was a spaceflight in the Tier One program that took place on October 4, 2004. It was the second competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition to demonstrate a non-governmental reusable crewed spacecraft, and is hence also referred to as the X2 flight.