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- On April 1, 2004, Scaled Composites received the first license for suborbital rocket flights to be issued by the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation. This license permitted the company to conduct powered test flights over the course of one year. On June 17, 2004, Mojave Airport reclassified itself (part-time) as the Mojave Spaceport.
- Flight 15P on June 21, 2004, was SpaceShipOne's first spaceflight, and the first privately funded human spaceflight. There were a few control problems, but these were resolved prior to the Ansari X PRIZE flights that followed, with flight 17P to 112 km on October 4, 2004, winning the prize.
Why is something only 12 years old history? They proved there was interest in a privately funded space industry.