Test pilot Mike Melvill flew Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne past the Kármán line—100 kilometers above Earth—on June 21, 2004, launched from the Mojave Desert. Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and designed by aviation legend Burt Rutan, the flight proved a private company could reach space without government backing, setting the stage for today's commercial spaceflight industry.
SpaceShipOne launched attached beneath a carrier aircraft, White Knight, released at 47,000 feet before igniting its own hybrid rocket motor and rocketing nearly vertically toward space. Melvill, 63 years old at the time, endured a mid-flight trim problem and a loud bang that turned out to be a stress-related but non-critical structural issue, yet pressed on to cross the 100-kilometer altitude that internationally defines the edge of space.
At apogee he experienced roughly three and a half minutes of weightlessness, and, in an unplanned bit of showmanship, released a handful of M&Ms candies to float in the cabin. He then glided the stubby, feathered-wing spacecraft back to a runway landing in the Mojave Desert, becoming the first person to pilot a privately built craft into space.
The flight, backed by over $20 million from Paul Allen and engineered by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, later won the $10 million Ansari X Prize after a repeat flight in October 2004. It proved that spaceflight need not be the exclusive province of national governments, directly inspiring Virgin Galactic and the broader commercial space era that followed.