▲ Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, at 18 meters long (60 feet), will be twice as long as the original SpaceShipOne. It will carry six passengers and two pilots aboard.
30 The Dream Becomes Real
Rutan’s optimism finally paid off. In 2004 his specially designed spaceship,
SpaceShipOne, successfully entered space and made it back to earth twice in
two weeks. Those were the requirements to win the ten-million-dollar
Ansari X Prize, a prize designed to encourage the development of private
35 space travel. Rutan’s success got the world’s attention, and various schemes
to commercialize private space travel began to appear.