Scaled Composites, LLC · Mojave, CA United States

A century after Wilbur Wright attained powered flight, Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites made the first privately funded supersonic manned flight. In May 2004 the company's SpaceShipOne reached the lower levels of space (64 km above Earth), and in June it reached outer space (100 km). In September 2004 SpaceShipOne repeated the feat -- with the weight of two additional passengers -- and in October of that year it successfully completed another flight to space, thus claiming the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, which required that a privately funded three-person craft successfully go 100 km into space and repeat the feat within two weeks. Microsoft co-founder and entrepreneur Paul Allen is a sponsor of the company. To read the full description, subscribe now.