There have been many critical moments in the history of space exploration -- Sputnik in 1957, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Neil Armstrong in 1969 -- but if you look back over the history of manned happenings outside of the atmosphere, almost all of these moments were driven by government funds. You have to fast-forward all the way to October 4th, 2004, the moment that pilot Brian Binnie crested at an altitude of 112km in SpaceShipOne, to find a similarly important moment in the history of private space flight.
That moment wouldn't have come when it did
