As befits the final frontier, space is proving rather difficult to conquer. Escaping the Earth’s gravity takes no small amount of engineering, as the space-faring nations found out. To help speed the exploration along, Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X-Prize Foundation decided to revive an old tradition in aviation (and before that, sailing) and offered a substantial cash reward ($10 million) to anyone who could reach outer space under certain conditions. Eight years later, the prize found a winner.

On this day, June 21, in 2004, in front of a crowd number twenty seven thousand technophiles the SpaceShipOne took off, becoming the first private venture aircraft to reach space.

SpaceShipOne was hardly a backyard assemblage, however. It was developed by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a joint effort between Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the noted aerospace engineer. Rutan created and tested the designs while Allen supplied the development funds, estimated to be in the $25 million range.