“SpaceShipOne was a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mothership was named “White Knight”. Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A chase plane follows SpaceShipOne after it reached a height of 62 miles in the first non-governmental flight to leave the Earth's atmosphere on June 21, 2004 in Mojave, California. SpaceShipOne spacecraft was carried to a height of 50,000 by the twin-turbojet high-altitude research aircraft, “White Knight”, where it was launched for its final climb. The space effort was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and headed by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan. (Photo by Jim Campbell-Pool/Getty Images)

Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, US. Equipped with sinewy necks and spear-like bills, great blue herons can lunge with fearsome speed to strike their aquatic prey. Adults will also employ rapid stabbing motions as one aspect of their complex courtship displays; they’re seemingly dangerous moves, but fitting to the intensity of mating season. (Photo by Melissa Rowell/Audubon Photography Awards)

Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

A Spanish national police officer uses his club to hit a protester during a demonstration called the Catalan pro-independence left youth group “Arran” on October 19, 2019 in Barcelona, a day after nearly 200 people were hurt in another night of violent clashes in Catalonia. The deterioration came on the fifth consecutive day of protests in the Catalan capital and elsewhere over a Spanish court's jailing of nine separatist leaders on sedition charges over a failed independence bid two years ago. (Photo by Josep Lago/AFP Photo)

Protesters use fireworks against riot police during clashes in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, a haven for extreme leftists and anarchists, Thursday, December 6, 2018. New protest marches were underway in Greece Thursday evening on the 10th anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager, hours after violent initial demonstrations where masked youths attacked police with firebombs and stones. (Photo by Yorgos Karahalis/AP Photo)

A Palestinian man sits on a damaged car following Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 20, 2021. Heavy airstrikes pummeled a street in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, destroying ramshackle homes with corrugated metal roofs nearby. The military said it struck two underground launchers in the camp used to fire rockets at Tel Aviv. (Photo by Khalil Hamra/AP Photo)

A dancer spits fire during a slum party at Oworonshoki district of Lagos, on November 27, 2021. In Oworonshoki, a poor district of Lagos, Nigeria's economic capital, an emerging artistic dance activists, Ennovate Dance House, is changing the narratives of the slum cummunity. The community which in the past was always in the bad news for cultism, violence and killings, suddenly is attracting tourist attention with a “Slum Party”, a yearly artistic dance festival being used by the group to give life and hope to the inhabitants. (Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP Photo)

Self-titled Pricasso – real name Tim Patch, 71, – is using his very own pen*s to create his masterpiece – and claims to have made close to £500k from his saucy paintings. Here: Pricasso gets to work with his tools - and paints The Sun's newspaper correspondent Amy Nickell with his bits in London, England on November 5, 2019. (Photo by Stewart Williams/The Sun)