  tier one is scaled composites' program of suborbital human spaceflight using the reusable spacecraft spaceshipone and its launcher white knight. the craft was designed by burt rutan, and the project is funded 20 million us dollars by paul allen. in 2004 it made the first privately funded human spaceflight and won the 10 million us dollars ansari x prize for the first non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft. the objective of the project is to develop technology for low-cost routine access to space. tier one is not itself intended to carry paying passengers, but it is envisioned that there will be commercial spinoffs, initially in space tourism. the company mojave aerospace ventures was formed to manage commercial exploitation of the technology. a deal with virgin galactic could see routine space tourism, using a spacecraft based on tier one technology. ==design== the design concept is to air launch a three-person piloted spacecraft which climbs to slightly above  altitude using a hybrid rocket motor and then glides to the ground and lands horizontally. scaled composites lists the following components of the program: *launch aircraft (white knight) *three-seater human-rated spacecraft (spaceshipone) *hybrid rocket propulsion system *mobile propulsion test facility *flight simulator *inertial-nav flight director *mobile mission control center *spacecraft systems *pilot training program *flight test program ===spacecraft===  tier one's spacecraft, scaled composites model 316, known as spaceshipone, is a spaceplane designed to: *carry three humans (one of them a pilot) in a sea-level pressurized cabin *be propelled by rocket from an altitude of  to in excess of  *reenter atmosphere and shed kinetic energy in an aerodynamically stable configuration *glide transonically and subsonically *land horizontally on a standard runway the fuselage is cigar-shaped, with an overall diameter of about . the main structure is of a graphite/epoxy composite material. from front to back, it contains the crew cabin, oxidizer tank, fuel casing, and rocket nozzle. the craft has short, wide wings, with a span of  and a chord of . there are large vertical tailbooms mounted on the end of each wing, with horizontal stabilisers protruding from the tailbooms. it has gear
Ansari_X_Prize Human_spaceflight Scaled_Composites Scaled_Composites_Tier_One_program Space_tourism