A public viewing of the SpaceShipOne? 

Wow!

First, there was Kitty Hawk.
Then, Cape Canaveral.
Now, Mojave.

Kitty Hawk happened in a previous lifetime. I always wanted to visit Florida and watch a Shuttle launch, but haven’t been able to as yet. If history was going to be made right here in the California Dessert, I wanted to be there to see it happen. The launch was scheduled for June 21^st at 6:30 am and the public would be allowed inside the airport starting at 3:00am

Arriving there at 3:00 am, it was comforting to see that there were people like me out there for whom this was a momentous occasion. The public viewing area was right across from the departure end of runway 30, giving a fairly decent view of not only the take-off but also the landing of SpaceShipOne.

As the sun arose over the dessert, rendering a reddish hue to the eastern sky, the winds which previously were gusting to 25 knots began to die down. Soon the reddish hue was replaced by bright yellow sunlight. It was going to be nice, warm, clear day with unlimited visibility (or should I say extremely hot first day of summer). Picture perfect weather to suit the very special occasion. Right on schedule, the majestic WhiteKnight with SpaceShipOne piggy-backed on its belly taxied past us, preceded by the three chase aircraft. All of us watched with bated breath and suppressed excitement. The time had finally arrived. As the jubilant crowds of 20 to 30 thousand people who had gathered there watched, White Knight was soon on the rollout ready for lift-off um.. I mean take-off to usher in a new era in the history of private manned space flight.

The estimated time to climb to the design altitude of 50000 ft when separation of SpaceShipOne from the launch vehicle was expected to occur was an hour. Everyone watched with their necks craning, trying to keep the rising spacecraft in view. The spacecraft and launch vehicle were easily visible with the naked eye for most of their ascent and separation phases. After that SpaceShipOne was on its own. With its rocket’s fired, off it went to catch a glimpse of the world from beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Though it was estimated that a total of three minutes would be spent in weightlessness, the ultimate time spent was barely a minute. Due to unscheduled problems it was decided to cut-short the flight and return it safely back to earth. Despite that, the mission achieved its goal of sending a pilot into space and experiencing weightlessness.

Under the skillful guidance of the first private astronaut Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne made it’s re-entry with a steep descent and finally a smooth landing. There was widespread cheering by the crowd. The chase aircraft too had ample occasion to celebrate the highly successfully mission and not to be outdone performed a formation flyby. When later asked about the flight, Melvill aptly described it as “touching the face of god”.

With the test flight complete, SpaceShipOne was rolled out for display towed by a truck before the cheering crowd and media that had graced the occasion. It was time to honor the men who made it all happen. It is moments such as these that touch our inner soul and inspire us to do great things.

If you are curious about the title of the article, Burt Rutan is famous for his open dissension of NASA policies. The whole venture by Rutan seeking the XPrize is wholly private, funded solely by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. Incidentally, Rutan was given the banner by a spectator during the victory roll. He ran across to accept it and triumphantly had Melvill wave it from atop SpaceShipOne.

Now that it is over, I can truthfully say if not I, at least my fingerprints have been in space and back (unless, of course, SpaceShipOne has been washed clean since that fateful day in October).

To learn more about SpaceShipOne visit http://www.scaled.com
To read about how my fingerprints got onto SpaceShipOne follow this link.

Note: Article appeared in the September/October issue of International Women Pilots, the magazine of the Ninety Nines.