Scaled Composites Tier One
Tier One was a Scaled Composites' 1990s–2004 program of suborbital human spaceflight using the reusable spacecraft SpaceShipOne and its launcher White Knight.
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 crewed spacecraft.
A deal[clarification needed] with Virgin Galactic could see routine space tourism in the late 2010s using a spacecraft based on Tier One technology.
The design concept of Tier One was to air launch a three-person piloted spacecraft which climbs to slightly above 100 km (62 mi; 54 nmi) altitude using a hybrid rocket motor and then glides to the ground and lands horizontally.
Its primary function is to monitor and record test data, and to this end it is equipped with computers and radio communication gear.
The MONODS is refilled from a commercial supplier, which uses 50 m3 (1,800 cu ft) tankers and delivers the nitrous oxide at about −17 °C (1 °F) and 2 MPa (290 psi).
The advantage of making it mobile is that all the mounting and instrumentation work can be done in the hangar, so that at the test site all that needs to be done is to fill the oxidiser tank (from the MONODS) and conduct the firing.
The test stand is instrumented to record not only thrust but also side force and temperature and strain experienced by components.
Further powered tests followed, reaching increasing altitudes, culminating on June 21, 2004 with the first privately funded human spaceflight, SpaceShipOne flight 15P.
The sole sponsor, initially secret, was revealed to be Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft and the 48th richest person in the world.
SpaceShipOne also does not carry the same crew (3 members vs. 7) or payload (negligible vs. 25 tons), and makes much shorter flights (a few minutes vs. several days).
On the other hand, the Tier One project also paid for construction of the White Knight mothership within its budget, while NASA had nearly free use of a pre-existing USAF B-52 bomber modified to perform drop tests of experimental aircraft of many kinds (currently in use for PegasusXL launches).
On April 18, 2003 the program was publicly announced, and SpaceShipOne and White Knight were demonstrated to the media at a rollout attended by between 550 and 600 people.
The flight was run as an airshow, with both the principal craft and the chase planes making takeoffs and landings in front of the crowd, and celebratory flybys when the test succeeded.
[citation needed] The stated objective of the Tier One program is to demonstrate suborbital human spaceflight operations at low cost.
To that end, Allen and Rutan created a company, Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which owns the project's intellectual property and manages all commercial exploitation of it.
Scaled Composites initially expressed a hope that by about 2013 it would be possible for members of the public to experience a suborbital flight for about the price of a luxury cruise.
