SpaceShipOne was the first privately funded spacecraft to fly a human above 100 kilometres.
On June 21, 2004, pilot Mike Melvill flew SpaceShipOne on Flight 15P from Mojave Air and Space Port. The vehicle was air-launched from White Knight and used a hybrid rocket motor to climb on a suborbital trajectory.
That flight made Melvill the first privately funded pilot to reach space under the 100-kilometre convention. SpaceShipOne later won the Ansari X Prize after completing two qualifying flights in October 2004 with Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill.
SpaceShipOne was built by Scaled Composites for the Tier One program, funded primarily by Paul Allen. It should not be confused with Virgin Galactic’s later SpaceShipTwo vehicles, which were developed for commercial passenger operations using related air-launch ideas.