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Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV) is a company founded by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan to handle the commercial spinoffs from the Tier One project. It owns the intellectual property arising from Tier One, and it is in turn owned by Allen (the majority shareholder) and Rutan's Scaled Composites. In 2004, it signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to develop the Virgin SpaceShip, a suborbital spacecraft, for space tourism. Virgin Group and Scaled Composites have subsequently formed a joint venture, The Spaceship Company, to manufacture the spacecraft.

Company

The structure of Mojave Aerospace Ventures appears to be the basis of the deal between Allen and Rutan for the funding of Tier One. The company owns all the intellectual property of the Tier One project, such as patents, and so controls commercial exploitation. Allen, the sole source of funding for Tier One, is the majority owner. Rutan, having developed the technology, owns a minority stake. This stands in contrast to the company more usually associated with Tier One, Scaled Composites, which, as of 2007, is owned by Northrop Grumman. MAV serves to separate Tier One spinoffs from Scaled. Mojave Aerospace Ventures is part of Allen's Vulcan Aerospace.

Tier One derivative applications

Virgin Galactic

On September 25, 2004, MAV agreed on a joint venture with Richard Branson's newly formed company Virgin Galactic, to develop a suborbital spacecraft for the space tourism market. The initial plan is to build five Virgin SpaceShips, based on scaling up the Tier One SpaceShipOne (SS1) design, with White Knight One (WK1) similarly evolved. The spacecraft would be manufactured by The Spaceship Company.

The designs for the Tier 1b customer suborbital spaceflight vehicles are referred to as SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its carrier aircraft is White Knight Two (WK2). The system, a suborbital space tourist system.

A further development of the technology, Tier Two and SpaceShipThree (SS3) was mooted. Either as, initially an orbital system, or, later, suborbital transcontinental/transoceanic transport. SS3 would eventually become into a further development of Tier 1b.

Stratolaunch Systems

A further application of the Tier One technology is for Allen's Stratolaunch Systems under Vulcan Aerospace with its Stratolaunch carrier aircraft Roc.

References

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

1. "Archived copy". www.virgingalactic.com. Archived from the original on 29 February 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
2. Northrop Grumman Buys Builder of SpaceShipOne, Brian Berger and Lon Rains, SPACE.com, 2007-07-20, accessed 2010-03-08.
3. ^ Dominic Gates (31 May 2015). "Tech billionaires aim for cheaper spaceflight". Seattle Times.
4. Erik Seedhouse (2015). Virgin Galactic: The First Ten Years. Springer. p. 37. ISBN 9783319092621.
5. Amjad P. Zaidi (3 October 2014). "Blazing a Trail: SpaceShipOne and the Ansari X Prize". Rocket STEM.
6. Knut Samset (2012). Beforehand and Long Thereafter. Ex Ante. p. 121. ISBN 978-82-93253-01-3.

External links

• Scaled Composites
• Vulcan Inc.

v t e Vulcan Inc.
Paul Allen Jody Allen
Subsidiaries	Seattle Cinerama The Hospital Club Vulcan Productions Vulcan Capital Vulcan Real Estate
Museums	Museum of Pop Culture Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum Living Computer Museum
Vulcan Aerospace	Mojave Aerospace Ventures The Spaceship Company Stratolaunch Systems Scaled Composites Roc SpaceX Falcon 9 Air Orbital Sciences Pegasus II
Mojave Aerospace Ventures	Tier One SpaceShipOne WhiteKnightOne Ansari X-Prize flights 11P 13P 14P 15P 16P 17P Tier 1b SpaceShipTwo RocketMotorTwo WhiteKnightTwo Stratolaunch Systems Scaled Composites Stratolaunch
Vulcan Sports and Entertainment	Seattle Seahawks Seattle Sounders FC Portland Trail Blazers Moda Center
Research and philanthropy	Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence Allen Institute for Brain Science Allen Institute for Cell Science Allen Brain Atlas Great Elephant Census RV Petrel
Other	Vulcan FlipStart
WikiCommons

v t e The Spaceship Company
Virgin Galactic
Related companies	Virgin Galactic (Virgin Group) Scaled Composites (Northrop Grumman) Mojave Aerospace Ventures (Vulcan Aerospace)
Notable people	Richard Branson (co-founder) Burt Rutan (co-founder) Doug Shane (former president) Peter Siebold (test pilot) Michael Alsbury† (test pilot) Brian Binnie (test pilot) Mike Melvill (test pilot)
Background	Ansari X Prize Scaled Composites Tier One SpaceShipOne White Knight One
Programs / ships	SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise† 2014 crash VSS Unity White Knight Two VMS Eve VMS Spirit of Steve Fossett RocketMotorTwo SpaceShipThree
Related topics	Mojave Spaceport Kármán line Space tourism Companies Sub-orbital spaceflight Spaceplane

v t e Space tourism
Organizations	Active Axiom Space Bigelow Aerospace Blue Origin Airbus D&S Mojave Aerospace Ventures Orbital Technologies PDAS Redwire Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Adventures SpaceX The Spaceship Company Virgin Galactic CAS Space ARCA Association of Autonomous Astronauts Astronaute Club Européen Commercial Spaceflight Federation Copenhagen Suborbitals Space Frontier Foundation Space Tourism Society Defunct Armadillo Aerospace Canadian Arrow Golden Spike Company MirCorp Orion Span PlanetSpace RocketShip Tours Space Island Group (Space Island Project) XCOR Aerospace
Vehicles	Current Soyuz Dragon 2 New Shepard SpaceShipTwo Future New Glenn SpaceShip III Starliner Starship
Living in space	Commercialization of space Space colonization Space medicine Space settlement Space station Suborbital spaceplane
Space competitions	America's Space Prize Ansari X Prize Google Lunar X Prize Space elevator competitions
Space tourists	Past Dennis Tito Mark Shuttleworth Gregory Olsen Anousheh Ansari Charles Simonyi Richard Garriott Guy Laliberté Oliver Daemen Jared Isaacman Sian Proctor Hayley Arceneaux Christopher Sembroski Yusaku Maezawa Yozo Hirano Larry Connor Mark Pathy Eytan Stibbe John Shoffner
Space tourism missions	Past Inspiration4 Blue Origin NS-16 Blue Origin NS-18 Blue Origin NS-19 Blue Origin NS-20 Blue Origin NS-21 Blue Origin NS-22 Galactic 02 Galactic 03 Galactic 04 Galactic 05 Galactic 06 Axiom-1 Axiom-2 Polaris Dawn Cancelled dearMoon
Related	Axiom Station Tourism on the Moon Tourism on Mars Haven-1

• Scaled Composites
• Virgin Galactic
• Mojave Air and Space Port
• Private spaceflight companies