Mike Melvill earned his astronaut wings. Credit: Scaled Composites, LLC
to offer the $30 million Lunar X Prize. NASA has also
ventured into the incentivised commercial arena with
its own Centennial Challenge Prizes since 2005 looking
for innovative solutions to technical issues from a wider
field. They have recognised the successes in the private
space sector and initiated commercial partnership
competitions with companies from Blue Origin to
SpaceX under the commercial development, crew,
cargo and orbital transportation services programs.
Many of the diverse private competitors from the
Ansari X Prize are still pursuing their goals to reach
space. In 2009 the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar
Lander X Challenge top prizes were shared among
Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
Technological and private sector legislative compliance
remain as hurdles to be overcome yet the boom in
the private spaceflight industry continues to gather
pace. Wider potential economic growth is also
offered by new private prospecting, research and
exploration companies. These have plans to mine off
world fuels and resources to release new economies,
prosperity, scientific breakthroughs and release the
pressure on dwindling natural resources at home.
Days of future passed
SpaceShipOne undergoing preflight inspection. Credit: Scaled Composites, LLC
Mission control during flight 15P. Credit: Scaled Composites, LLC
Peter Diamandis, Paul Allen, Burt Rutan and Brian Binnie celebrate. Credit: Don Logan
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As for the legacy of Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne,
the last decade since that historic flight has seen the
expansion of technology, investment and customer
appetite not just for Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipTwo
but for the commercial space sector as a whole.
Closer to home many Scaled Composites employees
have matured through the ranks of this growing
familial company and gone on to greater things.
Rutan retired in 2011 but remains as founder and a
mentor to other Tier 1b designers. He still maintains
goals of a Tier 2 program for orbital projects and a
Tier 3 program to reach other bodies in space.
For Rutan, r eceiving a National Student Design Award
in 1964 at an AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics) meeting led to an encounter with
Werner Von Braun which made a lasting impression.
He still strongly believes that the current generation
needs the courage and excitement to take risks in huge
funding and technology development for massive
breakthroughs and achievements as happened
during the space race. Solving safety concerns and
making aerospace investment profitable will be
the game changing shift driving true revolution.
The remarkable spacecraft itself now exists in two
places. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space
Museum in Washington DC, SpaceShipOne has taken
its place alongside the sound barrier breaking Bell X-1
“Glamourous Glennis” and Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit
of St Louis”. In recognition of Rutan’s achievement,
the New Horizons spacecraft carries a piece of
SpaceShipOne with it to a historic rendezvous with
Pluto in July 2015. From suborbital flight to the furthest
reaches of our solar system, SpaceShipOne is the little
ship that keeps on flying higher. It and Burt Rutan’s
legacies are secure in the pages of aerospace history.
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