On the 10th anniversary of the SpaceShipOne rocket’s final flight, enthusiasts of commercial space voyages gathered together for a special celebration. The party was held at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where SpaceShipOne was awarded the $10 million Ansari X prize exactly ten years ago.

Scaled Composites, funded by billionaire Paul Allen, built the suborbital rocket as a method of launching private space travel. It was the first private company to launch a spaceship over 62 miles in the air- the technical limit of outer space. While many scientists and benefactors attended the party, SpaceShipOne was not there; it’s currently in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Designer Burt Rutan spoke at the event, claiming that his accomplishment wasn’t just building a spacecraft. “It was an accomplishment of building a manned space program.”

Rutan retired in 2011, but his legacy lives on in the new SpaceShipTwo, a space plane built for Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic company. The spaceship is currently in testing mode, but Branson has claimed that he may fly into outer space on SpaceShipTwo next year. The current cost for potential passengers? A cool $250,000 for a galactic voyage.

Branson has long envisioned space travel as a practical and reasonable destination. “We’re going to start soon, as I’ve been saying for a few years, taking people to space and bringing them back again,” Branson commented at the event.

The event commemorated pilot Mike Melville’s bravery when undergoing the first flight of SpaceShipOne in June 2004. The first flight went off without a hitch, but the second flight began to spin at a dizzying pace until Melville finally got the craft under control. The third flight was manned by pilot Brian Binnie, who performed perfectly on Oct. 4, 2004 in order to win the coveted Ansari prize.

The cake held ten candles- one for every year of private space travel. In the future, there may be more and more candles.