SpaceShipOne is the name of the first privately funded, non-governmental spacecraft to leave Earth’s atmosphere and return successfully. Pilot Mike Melvill flew SpaceShipOne over the Mojave Desert in May 2004. It was the first successful test flight in the innovative rocket plane. Another flight occurred a few days later.

An unusual entrepreneurial aviation brain trust developed the craft in secret at the airfield and without the vast overhead of the national programs responsible for all previous manned spaceflights. The designer of the ship is Burt Rutan. SpaceShipOne was built by Rutan and researchers at his Mojave aerospace company, Scaled Composites. It’s a very small backyard operation when compared to NASA. The financial backing came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Rutan is the leading contender for the worldwide Ansari X-Prize, which aims to build space tourism. More than 20 teams around the world are in the competition. The prize is $10 million to the first privately funded, three-seat spaceship to reach 62 miles and repeat the flight within two weeks.