SpaceShipOne

SpaceShipOne was an experimental suborbital spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites, the aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan, and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. In 2004 it became the first privately funded crewed spacecraft to reach space, flying above the one hundred kilometer Karman line that is commonly used to mark the boundary of space, and it won the ten million dollar Ansari X Prize by repeating the feat with the same vehicle within two weeks. The spacecraft was carried to altitude by a jet powered mothership called White Knight before being released and igniting its own rocket motor, a design approach later developed further into the larger SpaceShipTwo.