SpaceShipOne to Join Smithsonian Collection

iamlucky13 writes "After having inspired space enthusiasts around the world and possibly setting the stage for space tourism by winning the X-Prize a year ago, SpaceShipOne is on it's way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There it will join other historic craft such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and Yeager's Glamorous Glennis. The exhibit will be unveiled on October 5th at a ceremony with Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipOne, and Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who funded the project."

Comments

Re:well that was a waste of time, wasn't it?

[ocelotbob]

The X-Prize was designed to spur invention and get people looking at private spaceflight and funding deals. SS1 is way too small to be commercially viable. It did it's job, and is now obsolete. Life is short when you're a prototype in an evolving industry.

There will be more

[mcraig]

It's not like they've thrown away the blueprints and with all the extra money from Virgin their going to be able to quickly fabricate many more with all the kinks from SpaceShipOne worked out, after all it is a prototype albeit a very good one. I can't wait to see the new version they make that comes with cup holders and leather trim interior.

Besides they probably felt they had a good chunk of flight data to analyze and could further refine the engine on the ground, traded against the risk of pushing it further to the limits and losing the ship and possibly pilot, at which point everyone would berate them for destroying a piece of history. Nope sounds like they made the right call to me.

Re:not so reusable, eh?

[nsasch]

So they paid $30 million to win a $10 million prize? They donated it to inspire others. They're currently working on SpaceShipTwo.