With all the hoopla about SpaceshipOne here is a somber voice:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04v.html

Seems Rutan himself avers that once the X-Prize is won, SS1 will probably roll straight off to a museum. This author believes it is a $20-million device for competing for the prize, and no good for anything else.

Let's hope he's wrong at least about the interest in space tourism that the prize will engender.

I am fairly sanguine about this. A vehicle designed to continue service to orbital altitudes over a longer lifespan would never have rolled off the assembly line soon enough to be a contender. The engineering excellence here is not that the next generation of spacecraft was invented in less time than I've been trying to learn the cello, but that a definite yet difficult aerospace goal was set, and then achieved by means expertly gauged to meet the desired ends. It's an eminently greater accomplishment than anything that could have been done with an open schedule on an unlimited budget. I think the effort has yielded engineering breakthroughs far out of proportion to its limited goals.

I see a stepwise and carefully progressive advance into space; perhaps it's most accurate to say that we've brought private efforts up to the level of the old Mercury program: an achievement, but also one that looks forward to the next two stages to come.

I'm betting the original Wright Flyer didn't see too much air time either. It was left behind by the very pace of invention that it set.