Oct. 5, 2004 — After flying successfully three times in space, SpaceShipOne is in demand as an alternative way to fly people and small payloads to suborbital space. But designer Burt Rutan has other plans in mind.

Eventually, Rutan, who crafted the only privately owned spaceship in history, wants to see his creation hanging in the Smithsonian National Air & Space museum in Washington, D.C. Before it is decommissioned, however, Rutan wants to use the ship as a flight test bed for his next project, SpaceShipTwo, the first of a fleet of five-passenger tourist ships.

"My gut tells me that the additional flying we may do on this airplane before it goes to the Air & Space Museum should be focused on developing the very best space tourism vehicle," Rutan said Monday after winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition.

"We may define reasons to fly SpaceShipOne in a research mode to gather more data, to get a few more pieces of information that will help us do a world-class job on developing a commercial spaceliner," he said.

Rutan is partnering with Virgin Atlantic Airways to develop the next-generation spaceship, which is scheduled to be delivered in three years. Unlike SpaceShipOne, the vessel will be designed to carry five people instead of three. Rutan and Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson have pledged to both be aboard during SpaceShipTwo's inaugural flight.

The spaceliner, called Virgin Galactic, will be based in the United States.

"I want my team to focus on us carrying through — not just doing a research flight and then waiting for someone to take it to the next step," Rutan said. "My gut tells me that we are going to be working very hard on the next step."

Several organizations, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have contacted Rutan about using SpaceShipOne for several proposed suborbital space missions.

Rutan, who developed SpaceShipOne with financing from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, said he plans to turn them down.

SpaceShipOne on Monday won an eight-year-old competition set up by the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation to fly a privately owned reusable craft to suborbital space.

Rutan's team at his Mojave, Calif.-based firm Scaled Composites, completed the second of the competition's two required flights on Monday. It previously flew a test flight in June.

Branson, who attended Monday's flight, said that any money his company makes from Virgin Galactic will be re-invested in developing space transportation systems, including orbital travel, a hotel in Earth orbit and eventually perhaps a hotel on the moon.

"Anything is possible," Branson said.