What Progress Has There Been in Private Spaceflight?
Since the self-financed visit of Dennis Tito, an American investment manager and former employee at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to the International Space Station in 2001, the field of private spaceflight has seen exciting progress. Every year there is another milestone, and no doubt this article will become out-of-date as time progresses. Still, we seek to describe the progress in private spaceflight that has been achieved as of November 2008. One of the most important historic moments in private spaceflight was achieved on 21 July 2004, when SpaceShipOne, a 5 m (16.4 ft) wingspan spacecraft built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, ascended past 100 km (62 mi) altitude, the international definition of space. The craft reached this altitude in two separate flights over a two week period. It set numerous records, including the first privately funded manned craft to reach space, and the first privately funded craft to exceed Mach 2 and 3. Though making a spacecraft capable of rea
