NASM, Washington D.C. – October 5, 2005 - One year and one day after it made history by becoming the first civilian spacecraft to fly to outerspace, SpaceShipOne was officially unveiled today at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM).
On Oct. 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, meant to encourage space travel, after pilot Brian Binnie flew the craft 70 miles or 112 km above the Earth. Five days earlier, Mike Melville achieved the same feat, flying 64 miles or 102 km high. The prize required a spacecraft to complete two suborbital flights within 14 days.
Burt Rutan, who designed the plane, and Paul G. Allen, Microsoft co-founder who funded the project, attended the unveiling ceremony in the NASM Milestones of Flight Gallery. SpaceShipOne is displayed between Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1.
Allen announced plans to donate the spacecraft to the Smithsonian on March 9, when, Rutan, Allen and the SpaceShipOne team from Scaled Composites won the Museum Trophy for Current Achievement, the museum’s highest honor relating to air and space technology and exploration.
After making its history-making flights in Fall 2004, SpaceShipOne and its carrier plane, the White Knight, arrived at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh for the annual fly-in and convention in July 2005. It made one other trip, to Dulles International Airport, before being transported by truck to the Smithsonian.
SpaceShipOne is the fifth Rutan-designed vehicle in the Smithsonian’s collection. Besides SpaceShipOne, the most famous is probably the Voyager, which in 1986 made the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world. It, too, stopped on the EAA grounds before being given to the museum.
Allen has spent more than $20 million on the SpaceShipOne effort, but some of his investment will be recovered under a deal with Virgin Galactic to provide a fleet of larger "SpaceShipTwo" rocket planes for suborbital space tourism. The first flights are planned to begin in 2008 and Virgin Galactic is now taking reservations and deposits. The ticket price is $200,000.
So what’s SpaceShipOne’s carrier airplane, WhiteKnight, up to these days? Find out!
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Paul G. Allen, left, and designer Burt Rutan celebrate SpaceShipOne's addition to the National Air and Space Museum's Milestones of Flight gallery, Oct. 5, 2005.
Photo by Eric Long/OIPP, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
SpaceShipOne, the first privately built and piloted vehicle to reach space, is now on display in the National Air and Space Museum's building on the National Mall in Washington. It hangs between Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, left, and Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1, above right, in the Milestones of Flight gallery.
Photo by Eric Long/OIPP, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
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