In the early twenty-first century, millions of people fly on airplanes between cities around the world. At any one time, an astounding 10 million people are airborne. But it was not always this way. Only 100 years ago, during the birth of aviation,...

The Ansari X PRIZE was a space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early...

Editor's Note: A hypertext-enhanced version of this article is availableon-lineatwww.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0411/Byko-0411.html INTRODUCTION When SpaceShipOne rocketed into history in October (Figure 1), it was not an exhibition of new technology. Far from it. This commercial spacecraft, designed for suborbital flight, had a carbon fiber...

Famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen used Mojave Aerospace Ventures and Scaled Composites Inc. to build and fly a three-person spaceship, SpaceShipOne. That spacecraft will lead the way for other vehicles that...

Google is going to the moon, and it will spend $30 million to get there. Google GOOG will sponsor the newest contest by the X Prize Foundation, which three years ago handed $10 million to a team that sent SpaceShipOne into suborbit and back twice...

The company that flew the first privately funded manned rocket into space has been cited in connection with an explosion last summer that killed three workers, the state said Friday.California occupational safety inspectors said in a report that Scaled Composites LLC failed to properly train...