Today is the 10th anniversary of Spaceship One winning the Ansari X-Prize

It's hard to believe that it's been a decade since Spaceship One completed its second qualifying sub-orbital flight to win the $10 million X-Prize. Spaceship One now holds a place of honor in the National Air and Space Museum alongside the Bell X-1 and the X-15.
The anniversary was commemorated in Mojave,Ca. Guests included:
Anousheh Ansari: first female private space explorer, and benefactor of Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight
Chuck Beames: Executive Director of Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch
Brian Binnie: SpaceShipOne’s Test Pilot for the award winning flight
Richard Branson: Founder of Virgin Group with Virgin Galactic’s revolutionary SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise)
Mike Melvill: SpaceShipOne’s Test Pilot for the first record breaking flight
Burt Rutan: Visionary Aerospace Engineer of SpaceShipOne

Below is a video of the webcast of the celebration.

10 years ago SpaceshipOne made first commercial space flight

Today is the 10th anniversary of SpaceshipOne's first flight into space. This was a first for a non-governmental spaceship  and later the same year, SpaceshipOne won the Ansari XPrize for make two spaceflights within two weeks. 2004 was also the year the Sir Richard Branson announced plans for Virgin Galactic to offer commercial sub-orbital flights.
Ten years later and that still hasn't happened yet but Branson claims that SpaceshipTwo will carry passengers by year's end. We'll see.

Back to the Know Future!

I considered just walking away from this blog and leaving it to the Russian spammers who still occasionally post to the comment section. I've been very busy lately with other things, including writing for Examiner.com and The Spaceflight Group .After a lot of thought, I've decided on an end date for this blog and have re-committed to updating it on a more regular basis, 2-4 times a month until that time.I still have a lot to say about the future and why it is/isn't what we were promised in Science Fiction and the pronouncements of futurists

 

I've just started reading a book about the 1964-65 New York World's Fair which is a subject I've been interested in. Also expect to see a review of the graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? The first unmanned test launch of NASA's Orion space capsule is scheduled for this year and next year might see the launch of non-government unmanned missions trying to win the Google Lunar X-Prize. So hopefully, this blog will continue well into next year. But, you may wonder, what is the specific end date? In the end, only one dated seemed really fitting...