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Contact: Sandy Ward, Marketing Director SpaceShipOne Video Arrives at the Future of Flight Everett, Wash --- There’s a short new video on the gallery floor of the Future of Flight Aviation Center at 8415 Paine Field Blvd in Mukilteo, WA. The video highlights SpaceShipOne, the first private, manned flight that traveled beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. It shows SpaceShipOne being carried to 13.8km (46,000ft) by its launcher, White Knight, after which it is unleashed, firing its engine to continue the journey upwards. The vehicle was funded by Paul G. Allen and the Burt Rutan company, Scaled Composites. In September, 2004, test pilot Mike Melvill reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approx. 62 mi or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere, and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings. The following week, pilot Brian Binnie reached this altitude for the second time in 14 days, thus allowing SpaceShipOne to claim the $10 million Ansari X-PRIZE. X PRIZE was backed by an educational non-profit prize institute that supports radical breakthroughs in space and technology for the benefit of humanity. The $10 million prize stimulated competition among the world’s most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts. The hope is that these vehicles will one day support personal spaceflight in a space tourism market. In 2005, Sir Richard Branson (Founder, Virgin Group of Companies) and Burt Rutan (President, Scaled Composites) announced their signing of an agreement to form a new aerospace production company, “The Spaceship Company”, that will build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company will own the designs of the new SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and White Knight Two (WK2) launch systems that are now in development at Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne is currently on display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. . For more information, visit www.futureofflight.org. |
