SpaceShipOne - First private suborbital spaceship

SpaceShipOne, the first privatly built spaceship was built by Scaled Composites, a Californian, Mojave desert located experimental aircraft company.

Burt Rutan constructed SpaceShipOne, the first privately built spaceship. It went into space on September 29th 2004 and October 4th 2004 on a suborbital pretty ballistic flight path, reaching altitudes of more than 100 km (62 miles). By doing this twice within a fortnight SpaceShipOne won the Anzari X-Prize (worth $10 Mio.).

To achieve this goal of a (suborbital) space flight, two aircrafts were actually constructed: The socalled White Knight carrier aircraft and a rocket propelled space ship named SpaceShipOne, which was carried up to 45'000 feet (15 km) before being released and ignited.