Scaled Composites White Knight

The Scaled Composites Model 318 White Knight, later also called White Knight One, was a twin-jet carrier aircraft built by Scaled Composites to lift the experimental spaceplane SpaceShipOne to launch altitude. It was designed by Burt Rutan around two afterburning General Electric J85 turbojets, flew for the first time on 1 August 2002 and carried SpaceShipOne on the three 2004 flights that earned the Ansari X Prize. Its forward fuselage shared its outer shape with SpaceShipOne, so pilots could use it as a flying simulator of the spaceplane's approach. After the Tier One programme it dropped the Boeing X-37 test vehicle in 2005 and 2006 and tested a flexible adaptive compliant wing. It made its last flight in July 2014 to Everett, Washington, where it joined the Flying Heritage Collection. It was the model ancestor of the larger White Knight Two.