What is SpaceShipOne?
SpaceShipOne is a 3-passenger spaceplane developed by the California company Scaled Composites in 2003. In 2004, it achieved world fame by flying the world’s first privately funded spaceflights and winning the $10 million US Dollars (USD) Ansari X Prize for its creators. The Ansari X Prize was created to award the first privately-funded team to build a vehicle that could reach 100 km (62 mi) in altitude twice in a two-week period with the equivalent of three people on board, with no more than ten percent of the non-fuel weight of the spacecraft replaced between flights. SpaceShipOne has achieved multiple suborbital space flights. This is a flight that reaches the altitude of the international definition for the boundary of space (the Kármán line), but does not come close to achieving a stable orbit around the Earth, like a Space Shuttle or the International Space Station. Launching a spacecraft on an orbital trajectory requires 60 times more energy than a suborbital trajectory. Launchi
