SpaceShipOne plus two

Published: Jun 26, 2006
Source: www.thespacereview.com



Last week marked the second anniversary of SpaceShipOne's historic suborbital spaceflight, yet prospective tourists may have to wait two more years before they can make a similar flight. Jeff Foust examines the reasons behind the lag in the suborbital space tourism marketplace, and what hope there is for the near future.

Two years ago last Wednesday—June 21, 2004—the space world’s attention was focused on a small airport in the desolate high desert 150 kilometers from Los Angeles. Or, more precisely, in the skies above Mojave Airport, as a small winged spacecraft, built using lightweight composites and powered by an engine that effectively used laughing gas and rubber as propellants, became the first privately-developed manned vehicle to cross the 100-kilometer boundary that serves as the demarcation line for space.continue..