SpaceShipOne to Join Smithsonian Collection

iamlucky13 writes "After having inspired space enthusiasts around the world and possibly setting the stage for space tourism by winning the X-Prize a year ago, SpaceShipOne is on it's way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There it will join other historic craft such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and Yeager's Glamorous Glennis. The exhibit will be unveiled on October 5th at a ceremony with Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipOne, and Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who funded the project."

Virgin Galactic

[tm2b]

To the people asking about the reusability of a craft that's being put on display...

SpaceShip One was the testing prototype. The production models are already being built, for Virgin Galactic [virgingalactic.com].

Yeah, that's right. A real company, run by someone who owns a real world-wide airline, will be using these babies for (near-) space tourism.

SS1 has been at Smithsonian since July

[chopkins1]

This is actually an old story. It had been reported earlier in the year that this was going to occur.

The SS1 Prototype has actually been at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Annex (Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum (UHASM)) in Dulles, VA since late July / early August awaiting transfer to the downtown Washington, DC center.

For those who would have wanted to see it there, while it was not on active display, it was there at the west end of the building under a great big blue tarp. They had it under the tarp because the director of the UHASM did not want to allow it on display because he "did not want to upstage the downtown facility's unveiling". For what it's worth, since it was there (and its not hard to recognize it under the tarp), I thought that it would not have hurt to have been not on active display but out from under the tarp and just have a temporary placard stating "Awaiting transfer to downtown facility for official showing".

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Homepage:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/ [si.edu]

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/ [si.edu]

It's already there

[uniq]

I took my 4.5 year-olds on their first visit to Air & Space when we happened to be
near Washington last weekend. SpaceShipOne was hanging in the main entrance hall,
but it was under wraps. The shape is distinctive, but I was disappointed that we
couldn't actually see it.

But it's already there... under a tarp.

[TheMadReaper]

The sentence "SpaceShipOne is on it's way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC." seems a bit inaccurate. A friend of mine who was there a week or so ago said that SpaceShipOne is already there, albeit under a tarp. Doent's seem like there is much traveling left for her to do. Naturally, a throng of people (including my friend) were there looking at the tarp, and probably taking pictures too to show to their kiddies/grandkiddies.

Re:some pictures...

[Spydr]

I was there last weekend, and it was already hanging up in the lobby, but still covered in the blue sheet.

I took a few pics of it: Smithsonian pictures [flickr.com]

Re:Too young for a museum ...

[Wyatt Earp]

Note, SS1 didn't reach orbital speeds (17,500 mph) and thus didn't undergo the tempratures due to reentry that Shuttle and other orbital reentry vehicles go through.

It's not that they out smarted NASA, they aren't doing near as much as Shuttle does in terms of speed and reentry.

When they go to an orbital vehicle then they'll have to deal with that level of speed and temp.