History and Status
According to Scaled Composites, the concept for the program originated in April 1996, preliminary development began in 1999, and full development began in April 2001. It was initially kept secret, even after White Knight first flew on August 1, 2002. The program was announced to the public on April 18, 2003, when the program was ready to flight-test SpaceShipOne. Its first flight test, SpaceShipOne flight 01C, took place on May 20, 2003.
After months of glide tests, the first powered flight, SpaceShipOne flight 11P, was made on December 17, 2003. Further powered tests followed, reaching increasing altitudes, culminating on June 21, 2004 with the first privately funded human spaceflight, SpaceShipOne flight 15P. Ansari X Prize competitive flights followed. SpaceShipOne flight 16P on September 29, 2004 and SpaceShipOne flight 17P on October 4, 2004 were successful competitive flights, winning the X Prize.
The program will continue making test flights, to develop the technology further, in support of the development of successor spacecraft such as the Virgin SpaceShip. The program has ruled out carrying scientific payloads, despite several requests.
Read more about this topic: Scaled Composites Tier One
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history and/or status:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom.... Goodbye to all that.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)