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For over 30 years space was only obtainable with huge budgets of government agencies. That all changed on Oct 4, 2004 when SpaceShipOne reached 100,000 KM above earth. Inspired by the X-Prize, Scaled Composites started from scratch and proved a private space program could be both possible and economically viable. The project was funded entirely by private donations with the largest coming from Paul Allen of Microsoft. They designed not only a ship to reach space but also a ship to carry it to the upper atmosphere. A year after the first test flight they reached the goal of being the first private space shuttle.
Peter H Diamandis read a copy of the Spirit of St. Louis and realized that the prizes offered in the beginning of manned flights helped to inspire early aviators. He thought that a prize for the first private organization to reach space would help to usher in private space flight. In 1995 he created the X Prize for this purpose. The Ansari X Prize is a ten million dollar......

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Approximate Word Count: 884
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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