*The following is archival content from 2003, hosted on the original X PRIZE website, to maintain authenticity.

Quote from Mitchell Burnside Clapp

"The X PRIZE has served the entire rocket and space community as a way to raise public awareness about the private design and development of spaceships. Pioneer Rocketplane is focused on creating a spaceship which is able to change the economics of space transportation, in the same fashion that the personal computer brought low-cost computing to the masses. We are proud to be participating in the X PRIZE and thank the people of St. Louis for their vision in creating this important challenge."

Flight Sequence

The key idea behind the Pioneer rocketplane called Pathfinder is that it can be aerially "refueled" from a tanker such as the US Air Force KC-135. This has caused some people to describe it as 'stage-and-a-half' rather than a true Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) vehicle. The Rocketplane will take off and land horizontally from a large commercial runway.