Flight 15P of
SpaceShipOne (X0) was the first privately funded
human spaceflight. It took place on June 21, 2004. It was the fourth powered test flight of the
Tier One program, the previous three test flights having reached much lower altitudes. The flight carried only its
pilot,
Mike Melvill, who thus became the first non-governmental
astronaut.
This flight was a full-altitude test. SpaceShipOne was dropped from its carrier aircraft, White Knight, at 14:50 UTC (7:50am PDT), at an altitude of 47,000 feet (14,000 m), and fired its on-board rocket for 76 seconds. It reached a peak altitude of 328,491 feet (100,124 m), becoming the first commercial manned spacecraft to cross the Kármán line. It landed safely at Mojave Air and Space Port, California, 15:14 UTC (8:14am PDT).
Flight 15P was a test flight to prepare Scaled Composites to compete for the Ansari X Prize, the prize for the first non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft. Scaled Composites would win the Ansari X Prize in October 2004 after two more successful flights.
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6, 1927 – April 27, 1992) was an
American physicist and space activist. A faculty member of
Princeton University, he invented a device called the
particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the
mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a
space habitat design known as the
O'Neill cylinder. He founded the
Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into
space manufacturing and
colonization.
O'Neill began researching high-energy particle physics at Princeton in 1954 after he received his doctorate from Cornell University.
Two years later, he published his theory for a particle storage ring. This invention allowed particle physics experiments at much higher energies than had previously been possible. In 1965 at Stanford University, he performed the first colliding beam physics experiment.
While teaching physics at Princeton, O'Neill became interested in the possibility that humans could live in outer space. He researched and proposed a futuristic idea for human settlement in space, the O'Neill cylinder, in "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject. He held a conference on space manufacturing at Princeton in 1975. Many who became post-Apollo-era space activists attended. O'Neill built his first mass driver prototype with professor Henry Kolm in 1976. He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates. He died of leukemia in 1992.