Timeline of Space Events

I've compiled a list of events which have been contributing and leading to commercial space flight, if you know of anything you feel should be included in this page please let me know.

The 00's

April 2001
American businessman Dennis Tito paid US$20 million to fly to space. Tito was launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which docked with the International Space Station (ISS) during the missions. Tito spent eight days in space, siz of which he spend in side the ISS.
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April 2002
South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth became the second commercial space tourist as a member of another Soyuz mission to the ISS.

June 21, 2004
MOJAVE, Calif., With a triumphant thumbs-up and a broad grin, the pilot of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane celebrated becoming the first private-sector astronaut to steer his ship into space by less than a tenth of a mile.
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May 2002
Public opinion poll conducted by Zogby International indicates a large number of people would pay to experience sub-orbital flight.
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October 2002 The U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Space Commercialization issued a study entitled Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles and Applicable Markets. This report confirmed the reality of the emerging sub-orbital market and defined it as the next step to the commercialization of space. It specifically mentions Rocketplane as one of the companies developing this market.
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21 June 2004
Manned space flight changed forever on 21 June 2004 when Mike Melvill, chief test pilot for Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, earned his astronaut wings flying the first private (non-government sponsored) spacecraft to an altitude of 100 km (62 miles).
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29th September 2004
Mike Melvill returned from 330,000 feet having just successfully completed the first of two Ansari X-Prize qualifying flights.
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4 October 2004
X-Prize competition ended when Scaled Composites completed the second of two X-Prize flights. The first flight occurred 29 September 2004.

27th July 2005
At the EAA Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin, Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan announced their signing of an agreement to form The Spaceship Company a jointly owned venture by Virgin and Scaled.
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