SpaceShipOne Concepts

Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut

by Nicholas Schmidle · 3 May 2021 · 342pp · 101,370 words

awful series of stories from Iraq about suicide bombings and videotaped beheadings, waiting for the segment about Rutan’s spaceship. Scaled was calling the craft SpaceShipOne, and the mothership, which would carry the spaceship to its launch altitude of about 45,000 feet, White Knight, and now they were on the

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the sky, he said, “You would not believe the view”; and when Melvill landed he climbed onto the ship and raised a sign that read: “SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero.” He went up again in late September, but barely made it back alive, as he barrel-rolled into space at two times the speed

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in-laws were in town. His mother-in-law spilled coffee on him the next morning. Thousands of people came to watch. Binnie sat in SpaceShipOne while White Knight carried him to altitude. He felt nervous and scared of screwing up but told himself that his fear was proof that he

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wave that might sweep him away, but when the rocket burned out the vibrations stopped. “All the tension melts,” said Binnie. Mike Melvill (standing) after SpaceShipOne’s first successful space flight, with Paul Allen (left) and Burt Rutan. He looked out at the inky blackness beyond his windows, the edge of

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or think in all the mayhem. He eventually glided down over Mojave, a kind of coiled pattern, like water circling a drain. This technique enabled SpaceShipOne to control its speed using drag and mimicked the landing pattern used by the Space Shuttle and the X-15. Binnie landed flawlessly. “He just

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hole in the ground, particularly if there are casualties,” he said. “If the desert is turning red, we’re in trouble.” But Stucky was undeterred. SpaceShipOne filled him with elation, envy, and hope. He had given up his dream of becoming an astronaut after all those unsuccessful NASA applications. Now he

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airplane that could circumnavigate the world without refueling. A year later, one of Branson’s deputies went to check on the project and stumbled onto SpaceShipOne under construction. He immediately called Branson. “They’re building a fucking spaceship!” said the deputy. Branson had long been fascinated by space travel. He once

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had his own impossible idea. He wanted Rutan to build him a rocket for tourists—just like SpaceShipOne, but bigger. Branson had paid a million dollars to Paul Allen to put a Virgin decal on SpaceShipOne, gaining the right to one day adapt the design for tourists. But he couldn’t do

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flew to Mojave to see what they were all about. He was met by a couple of senior engineers who showed him around the hangar. SpaceShipOne glistened under klieg lights, radiant with accomplishment. The Smithsonian had recently announced its intent to display the craft in the foyer of the Air and

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X-1. The engineers told Colby that they basically wanted to build a bigger version of the hybrid-fuel motor that they had put in SpaceShipOne. Generally, rockets are classified by fuel. Most rockets use a solid- or liquid-fuel system; both have advantages and disadvantages. Solids are simple but burn

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be throttled, but they are exceedingly complex—a Medusan knot of pipes, umbilicals, vents, valves, and cryogenic storage tanks. Inevitably, complexity increases risk. When designing SpaceShipOne, Rutan thought a hybrid motor would offer the best of both worlds. Hybrids created combustion by combining a solid-fuel component, or “grain,” with a

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called a hybrid-fuel rocket an engine when it was a motor. When the interview was over Colby asked the engineers if he could approach SpaceShipOne for a closer look. Usually people first poked their heads through the hatch to see the cockpit. But Colby walked straight to the tail to

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day Colby was surprised to discover the fledgling and uncertain state of the propulsion program. Scaled had used rubber as the solid-fuel grain on SpaceShipOne, but now they were experimenting with candle wax and it was giving them fits. They desperately needed help, which was overwhelming for someone straight out

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sharing information with them. Most of Virgin’s employees were not US citizens. “That set the tone between us and Virgin,” said Brian Binnie, the SpaceShipOne pilot. Binnie had stayed on at Scaled. He was deeply involved with the early days of the SpaceShipTwo program. Virgin, he said, was “totally unrealistic

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and told the boss that he was doing it wrong, that they were using the wrong type of fuel grain. Scaled had burned rubber on SpaceShipOne, and they were doing it again on SpaceShipTwo. Colby suggested they consider using plastic instead, arguing that plastic would improve performance and burn cleaner. Rutan

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. There was no time. They had to feather. Now. A decade earlier, when Rutan was trying to get Paul Allen, the Microsoft founder, to fund SpaceShipOne, he had to convince Allen that Scaled wasn’t going to kill a pilot in pursuit of the X Prize. To satisfy this requirement, Rutan

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; this allowed the booms to bite the air, right the ship, and facilitate a “carefree reentry.” Rutan called his innovation the feather. Brian Binnie, the SpaceShipOne pilot, likened the feather to a pair of “angel’s wings.” Rutan never meant for the feather to be used as a spin recovery mechanism

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quietly shut the door when he left. * * * THE HOTEL STOOD at the edge of town near a sign that read, WELCOME TO MOJAVE: HOME OF SPACESHIPONE. Stucky passed the sign, hoping others might one day see SpaceShipTwo on a similar sign. Stu Witt, the airport manager, would go to Washington and

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gathered for a festival. An organizer described plans for the event as “Coachella on steroids.” The moment was further enriched by the tenth anniversary of SpaceShipOne’s X Prize flight. On October 4, 2014, Branson attended a ceremony in Mojave to commemorate the historic flight. He said of SpaceShipTwo, “We’re

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light flashed because they were outside the “glide cone”—an indication that if they didn’t alter their approach they could miss the runway. Like SpaceShipOne, the Space Shuttle, the X-15, and other gliders, SpaceShipTwo descended in a coil shape, using drag to control its speed. Each of those aircraft

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raised their hand. The bus rolled out. They had a two-hour drive ahead of them. Stucky put on a documentary about Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne to get people in the mood. Rutan’s witticism about the need of having confidence in nonsense drew laughs. Later, when one of Rutan’s

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about these discussions made Stucky awfully uncomfortable at first: it felt like Virgin was trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. SpaceShipOne had flown to three twenty-eight, and Scaled designed SpaceShipTwo with the same goal in mind, so it felt cheap to be not only lowering

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how many new rocket systems had flown humans to space in the fifty years since then. “Three!” he said. “Shuttle. Chinese Shenzhou, in 2003. And SpaceShipOne. I’m not proud of that. I should be. But how can you be proud of that fact that almost nothing happened for forty-eight

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you bonding to what?” asked Rutan. “Carbon to carbon,” said Stucky. “And you’re using a 3M paste? We didn’t even use that on SpaceShipOne.” “That explains everything,” said Stucky, shaking his head. He was tired of hearing Virgin’s engineers always dumping on Scaled and insisting they knew some

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h-stabs to help keep the wings level around Mach 2. “We didn’t have stability augmentation. Or a yaw damper. The control system on SpaceShipOne was the same as a Piper Cub—cables for rudders and push rods to the elevons—but we did have electric trim for the stabilizers

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wings and booms. Rutan recalled having these same arguments with his thermal engineer, who had claimed Scaled needed forty-two pounds of thermal protection on SpaceShipOne. “I talked him down to fourteen,” said Rutan. “We needed four.” How much did they have on SpaceShipTwo? “A couple hundred,” said Stucky. Rutan had

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things up with endless tweaks and improvements and modifications, he said, “Right up until the point when a program runs out of money.” * * * RUTAN BUILT SPACESHIPONE for about $25 million, and after the craft completed three space flights and won the $10 million X Prize, Paul Allen, by selling the patents

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Salman, Mohammad Bissinger, Buzz Blackwell, Eric Blue Origin Blue Zebra Boeing Bowie, David Branson, Holly Branson, Richard accused of hucksterism ambitions of attends ceremony commemorating SpaceShipOne at ceremony honoring Stucky and Sturckow crash of SpaceShipTwo and criticisms of dolls based on donates rocket motor to National Air and Space Museum first

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receives medallion from Aero Club de France rocket-powered flight test and Schmidle’s “Rocket Man” profile of Stucky in New Yorker and SkiGull and SpaceShipOne and Stucky and takes medical leave Trump and wins X Prize Rutan, Tonya Sagan, Carl Salina, Kansas Saling, Michelle Salter, James, The Hunters Salty Dogs

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of sloppiness “cold flow” test explosion at crash of SpaceShipTwo and as engineering cult design of SpaceShipOne and party in 2009 and PR and rocket-powered flight test Rutan’s philosophy at SETP tour and SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo and Stucky and Virgin Galactic and Schmidle, Bohan Schmidle, Nicholas (author) background of centrifuge

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Russia collapse of space race and Soyuz space, definition of SpaceDev Space Force space gloves Space Mirror Memorial Spaceport America space race Spaceship Company, The SpaceShipOne ability to reach 328,000 feet design of documentary about funding for wins X Prize SpaceShipTwo ability to reach 328,000 feet altitude discrepancy and

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of SpaceShipTwo and delivers commencement address in Salina, Kansas dietary regimen of divorces Joan at Dryden Flight Research Center earns Navy commendation medal elation about SpaceShipOne Ericson and fails to make final cut for Astronaut Candidate Program first SpaceShipTwo space flight and Fischer and G-LOC experience hang gliding in 1974

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

by Julian Guthrie · 19 Sep 2016

at all—apparently revealing an attitude that the project was hopeless—or bids to build custom-designed components at a cost that exceeded the entire SpaceShipOne budget. Quickly switching to another plan, Scaled set up visits to the community of small operators, including Gary Hudson, eAc (Environmental Aeroscience Corporation), and

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had already succeeded in flying the White Knight—the mother ship. Resembling the Proteus, but bigger and more beautiful, the White Knight would take SpaceShipOne to around fifty thousand feet up before releasing the rocket for its final ascent to space. The White Knight’s first flight had been memorable

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more like a mission. There could be no motor misfirings, no loose or faulty pieces. They had to get everything right. — The rollout of SpaceShipOne was now scheduled for the morning of April 18, 2003—Good Friday. Burt was working around the clock, drinking copious amounts of coffee. In earlier

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. Cameras were pointed at the small, strange-looking rocket—white, pristine, blue stars painted on its belly, a nozzle out the back. The name SpaceShipOne was on the side, with the FAA registration number N328KF—for 328 kilofeet (about 100 kilometers), the designated start of space and chosen finish line

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of thermal protection. Types and ratios of fillers and resins had been changed, quantities added and subtracted, in pursuit of the formula that could protect SpaceShipOne as it cut through the atmosphere on its return to Earth. But so far, nothing was working. The rocket plane had already gone on

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concoctions for thermal protection were failing time and time again. Burt kept saying they needed something light and easy. Stinemetze examined the cracking coat on SpaceShipOne and stated the obvious: “This is not going to work when we go to high altitude.” Burt took one look and said, “Take this

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aircraft that no one thought would fly, a bunch of “motorcycle mechanics in the desert” were ready for the first powered flight of SpaceShipOne. The White Knight and SpaceShipOne were rolled from the hangar of Scaled into the early morning light. The plan for the flight was straightforward: achieve a fifteen-second

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titled “Manned Space Vision Summit.” He talked excitedly about private space stations, zero-gravity hotels, and orbital ships. He shared his renderings for an “upgraded SpaceShipOne with room for seven passengers.” Between the slides and musings, Burt said to both men, “You’re probably asking what we should do this year

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details were discussed: the weight of the fully loaded spaceship, pilot included, was 6,380 pounds; the target altitude for the White Knight to release SpaceShipOne was 46,000 feet; and wind limits to takeoff were fifteen knots crosswind. Shane, who had perfected the art of impassivity, noted with his

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“Oh boy,” Brian said, “let this be a good day.” From out in the crowds, cheers rang out as the twin-engine White Knight, carrying SpaceShipOne, approached. A young girl yelled out excitedly, “The White Knight is coming! The White Knight is coming!” Minutes later, the applause and cheers erupted again

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28 Power Struggles After the June 21 flight, Burt started questioning for the first time whether his homemade craft could pull off the XPRIZE feat. SpaceShipOne had barely reached its goal of space, and pilot Mike Melvill had endured the flight of his life. To the public, it appeared Scaled Composites

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now his nightly routine. It was about relieving stress and pressing on despite the pain. Ultimately, it was about getting back inside the cockpit of SpaceShipOne. After his crash landing seven months earlier, on December 17, 2003, Brian had spent Christmas trying to find meaning in what had happened. He

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media appearances, including the Jay Leno show. Mike’s new celebrity status drew old-time celebrities to Scaled. Everyone wanted to take a look at SpaceShipOne. One day Harrison Ford popped in, unannounced. Another day, it was Gene Hackman. These days, Mike was basking in unofficial semiretirement, saying he was

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spaceship—taking Burt’s designs, making any fine-tune adjustments, and then instructing the shop on building—was also Scaled’s in-house artist. For SpaceShipOne, he and Brian Binnie had worked out a patriotic theme. Because the plane was going to space, Kreigh became obsessed with finding a subliminal

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mementos thrown in by Scaled employees. There were dozens of wedding rings, bundles of coins, photos, and personal talismans. Soon, the White Knight, coupled with SpaceShipOne, began rolling down the runway. In the White Knight, Brian Binnie was again the “bus driver,” and Stinemetze was in the passenger seat. A consummate

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air. An hour later, as commentators, including Peter and Witt, addressed the crowd from various stages, and onlookers aimed powerful lenses at the sky, SpaceShipOne was released from the White Knight. X1 was under way, watched by a global Webcast and live television. Even the hotshots at Edwards Air Force

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tuning in; they were testing a high-resolution missile-tracking camera that would observe the flight from takeoff to landing. Seconds after the release of SpaceShipOne, Mike, in helmet and aviator shades, said, “Armed-fire.” “Good light,” he said, thrust back into his seat. The rocket was on its ascent.

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years of flight testing, Mike had deliberately spun planes. He didn’t know until now that you could spin while going straight up. Now that SpaceShipOne was out of the atmosphere, the aerodynamic controls no longer had any effect. The control stick and rudder pedals became “loose” and were completely

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apply his massive wealth to space. This was the inflection point, Peter believed, in which the downward spiral of manned spaceflight turned around. Peter watched SpaceShipOne. He had three treasured books in the ballast box behind Brian’s seat: The Man Who Sold the Moon; The Spirit of St. Louis,

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pushed the control stick forward to prepare for the release. Mike called the release: “Three-two-one—release,” and Stinemetze pulled the lever to drop SpaceShipOne. “Released, armed, fire,” Brian said. “Holy crap, that was close!” Stinemetze said of the spaceship’s quick turn upward. Brian had charged out of

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“Wow, it’s quiet up here.” “Copy that.” “Better get the camera out.” “Roger that.” Brian took pictures and then released a paper model of SpaceShipOne that someone had given him before the flight. The paper spaceship effortlessly took its own gravity-free flight around the cockpit. Then Brian heard Burt

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of that momentum was a surprise. The spaceship kept going upward until it reached 367,550 feet. “Outstanding,” Brian said. Having reached its top altitude, SpaceShipOne began its quick descent. Brian could still smell the vanilla-flavored coffee. “Here come the gs,” Shane said. “Five gs,” Brian called. Burt took

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adventure. Burt insists the SkiGull, which is saltwater resistant, is the last plane he will ever design and build himself. Six of his planes, including SpaceShipOne, hang in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. —Mike Melvill retired from Scaled Composites in October 2007. He still flies his Long-EZ and

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going on. When we started working for Burt in September 1978, the whole company consisted of Burt and Sally and me!” —After the success of SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites began work on SpaceShipTwo for Richard Branson and his spaceship company. Brian Binnie spent the decade after Scaled won the XPRIZE working through

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the many issues related to scaling SpaceShipOne into the considerably larger SpaceShipTwo, which will have two pilots and six passengers. Brian left Scaled in 2014 to work on a completely different suborbital

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western coastline, where the more rustic weather and temperatures remind him of his Scottish roots. —Paul Allen, who spent around $26 million on SpaceShipOne, said that seeing SpaceShipOne hang in the Smithsonian was a day he’ll never forget. “I haven’t had any days prouder than that one,” Allen said.

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Mercury and shuttle spacecraft designer Max Faget (center) and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Bradley Waits Also at the April 2003 rollout of the White Knight and SpaceShipOne, Scaled’s pilots (left to right) Doug Shane, Mike Melvill, Pete Siebold, and Brian Binnie. Bradley Waits Steve Bennett, a Brit, left a secure

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Mojave Desert in California in the early morning of June 21, 2004, in hope of witnessing history. Mark Greenberg Burt Rutan’s White Knight carries SpaceShipOne to altitude. After being released from the White Knight at 48,000 feet, spaceship pilot Mike Melvill lights the rocket motor and tries to make

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Melvill signs a woman’s back as others ask for his autograph. Mark Greenberg Burt Rutan turns and smiles as pilot Mike Melvill (center) and SpaceShipOne backer Paul Allen greet photographers and others in Mojave following the historic June 21, 2004, suborbital flight. Mark Greenberg Following the flight, a triumphant Mike

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4, 2004, flight. Dave Moore After a lifetime of dreaming, Peter Diamandis (right) and his father, Harry, watch the winner-takes-all flight of SpaceShipOne on October 4, 2004. October 4 was chosen by Burt Rutan to commemorate the anniversary of the launch of Sputnik (1957), the world’s first

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Binnie comes in for a landing to try to win the $10 million XPRIZE. Mark Greenberg Richard Branson (in white shirt) hugs Burt Rutan after SpaceShipOne wins the XPRIZE. For both men, the day heralded a new era for commercial spaceflight. Mark Greenberg An exultant Peter addresses the crowd after the

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’s story of getting knocked down and of his determination to get back into the proverbial ring wowed me. I pored over flight logs of SpaceShipOne, watched hours of video, listened to audio recordings, and read notes taken during the test flights and XPRIZE flights. I interviewed spectators and competitors

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Albany Medical School, 95 Alcock, John, 171n, 194 Aldrin, Buzz, 32, 177 Apollo 11, 12, 14–16, 48, 182, 228–29 Blastoff Corporation, 228–29 SpaceShipOne and, 2, 256, 315, 341 XPRIZE, 164, 170, 172, 177, 204 Allen, Paul background of, 200–201 formation of company with Rutan, 254–57 Rutan

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133, 335, 335n Bowman, Kathlene “Kit,” 312 Branson, Richard, xiii–xvi balloon race and Virgin Global Challenger, 195 Diamandis and XPRIZE, xiii, xv, 208–11 SpaceShipOne and, 335–36, 341 buys rights to, 336n, 376–77 flight day one, 376–77, 385 update on, 408–9 Virgin Galactic, xiv, xv–xvi

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–2 Musk meeting, 238–44 Diamandis, Tula, 37, 72 Apollo 11 landing, 15, 16–17 early life of Peter, 19–20 MIT visit, 30–32 SpaceShipOne and, 375, 381–82, 400 XPRIZE and, 204 Diet Rite, 374 Direct injection, 230–31 Disney, Walt, 52–53, 348 Dobronski, Joe, 262, 264

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Explorers Club, 168 Faget, Maxime “Max,” 314, 316–17 Falcon 9, 319 Fate Is the Hunter (Gann), 60, 147 Fazio, Giovanni, 96 Feather configuration of SpaceShipOne, 3, 6, 249–50, 253–54, 314, 316–17, 330, 344, 351, 383, 384, 396 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 251, 374 Office of Commercial

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Space Transportation, 168, 271, 340, 343–44, 347–48, 369 SpaceShipOne and, 336–37, 340, 343–44, 347–48, 349, 380–81, 385 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, 61 Feeney, Brian, 184, 274, 293, 296, 371 Feynman, Richard

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169 Raytheon, 350 Reagan, Ronald, 42, 45, 73, 107, 120, 212 Redstone, 11, 118, 248, 316 Reentry, 248–49, 253–54 Apollo 11, 14–15 SpaceShipOne, 5–7, 316, 344, 383, 397 thermal protection systems, 249, 249n, 311–12, 322–23 Republic Field, 285–86 Ressi, Adeo, 238–43, 317–19

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168 Robertson, Cliff, 315 Robertson, Frank, 168 Robertson Aircraft Corporation, 168 Rocket coding, 186–87 Rocket equation, 24n, 129, 129n Rocket fuel, 24–25, 271 SpaceShipOne, 2–3, 30, 130–31, 258, 305–7, 350–52, 358–60 Rocket Racing League, 410 Rockwell X-30, 120 Rogers, William Barton, 31 Rogers

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, 256–57, 324, 327–28 Rules, breaking, xiv–xv Rutan, Carolyn, 157 Rutan, Dick background of, 55–56 balloon misadventure, 189–96 Catbird flight, 117 SpaceShipOne and, 356, 378, 381, 382 Voyager One flight, 54–62, 135, 189 Rutan, Elbert “Burt,” xiv aircraft designs, 116–17, 153–54, 156–58,

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328 Saturn V, 13, 14, 24, 40, 118, 307 Scaled Composites, 54, 116–17, 128, 158–61, 245, 250–52, 296, 305–6. See also SpaceShipOne; and specific aircraft and persons update on, 407–8 Schankman, Steve, 169 Scharfman, Scott, 41–42, 391 Scherer, Robert, 393 Schmitt, Harrison, 20, 229 Schweickart

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184, 274 Shepard, Alan, 133n, 166, 248, 316, 386 Shockley, Bill, 31 Shuttleworth, Mark, 299 Sidewinders, 350 Siebold, Pete, 409 Proteus and, 196–97, 198 SpaceShipOne and, 353, 354–55, 360–61, 387 flight tests, 323–24, 339–40, 341 Sikorsky, Igor, 80n, 171 Singularity University (SU), 405–6 SkiGull, 406

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9, 210, 239, 409 SpaceDev, 306–7 Spaceflight prizes, 125, 131–35, 140–42. See also XPRIZE Space Foundation, 168 Space Frontier Foundation, 168, 185 SpaceShipOne, 305–17, 321–62, 375–401 Allen and XPRIZE, 252–57 design considerations, 245–58 fabrication of, 311–12, 313 feather configuration, 3, 6, 249

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, 88, 319 Star Wars program. See Strategic Defense Initiative Stemme S10, 115 Stinemetze, Matt, 250–52 background of, 251–52 Challenger disaster and, 312–13 SpaceShipOne and, 258, 311–12, 321–23, 342, 349–50, 352, 356, 379–80, 395 Stober, Clifford, 21 Stofan, Andy, 106 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),

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up as they cross from the thermosphere into the mesosphere. *Paul Allen and Richard Branson had begun discussions about Branson’s buying the rights to SpaceShipOne in March, three months before this dinner in the desert. But no deal had been made. *It was later determined that the bangs were

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a stop. *George Whitesides, Peter’s roommate during the Blastoff days, would go on to become Virgin Galactic’s CEO. *Burt believed that the SpaceShipOne program would be historic and wanted every Scaled employee to be able to tell his or her grandkids that they played some part in helping

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planning; twenty-five people involved in building White Knight and designing and testing the rocket; and about sixty people working on both White Knight and SpaceShipOne, the avionics and simulator. During the year leading up to the flights to space, there were thirty people directly involved in the space program.

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

by Christian Davenport · 20 Mar 2018 · 390pp · 108,171 words

PART I IMPOSSIBLE CHAPTER 1 “A Silly Way to Die” CHAPTER 2 The Gamble CHAPTER 3 “Ankle Biter” CHAPTER 4 “Somewhere Else Entirely” CHAPTER 5 “SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero” PART II IMPROBABLE CHAPTER 6 “Screw It, Let’s Do It” CHAPTER 7 The Risk CHAPTER 8 A Four-Leaf Clover CHAPTER 9 “Dependable

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while kicking up a cloud of dust. It was a small first step. But for the first time, Blue had left Earth—and returned. 5 “SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero” BURT RUTAN CHOSE the day carefully—December 17, 2003, the hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight—to send a signal about the

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supersmart, and combined his aerospace experience with his engineering background to develop the simulator they were using for Rutan’s latest invention, a spaceplane called SpaceShipOne. “You could not get any more different,” Rutan recalled years later. “I wanted all three of these guys to be astronauts.” The curious-looking

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airplane engineers, who were designing, testing, and then flying the planes they had built, usually within a year. Instead of launching vertically from a launchpad, SpaceShipOne would be tethered to the belly of a mothership that would fly to nearly 50,000 feet. Once aloft, the mothership, known as WhiteKnightOne, would

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devastating consequences. RUTAN HAD FACED a difficult decision in picking the pilot for the first powered flight. Up to now, the pilots had been flying SpaceShipOne like a glider, floating back to the ground. But on this flight, the plan was to not only light the engine for the first

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the spaceplane, he sat patiently while WhiteKnightOne escorted him to altitude. Then, when it was time, he calmly told mission control, “Go for release.” After SpaceShipOne dropped, he lit the ignition and was off. The motor blast pinned him back into his seat, and the engine burned for just fifteen white

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face of the program, the brash engineer who said he wanted “to go high because that’s where the view is.” But until he unveiled SpaceShipOne several months before Binnie’s flight, he had treated it like a classified program, demanding the highest level of secrecy. That was in part

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once again, that he had the right stuff to pull off a stunt as crazy, and dangerous, as this. On an earlier test flight of SpaceShipOne, the flight navigation system went out just as he had hit the ignition switch and was screaming upward, almost perfectly vertical. Everyone in mission control

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concurred. But he still had this reservation about Siebold: “He might quit.” “Pete didn’t achieve the goals of his first rocket-powered flight in SpaceShipOne because he couldn’t bring himself to throw the switch and light the motor at the right time,” Rutan said later. “Mike and Brian had

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stood shoulder to shoulder in their flight suits, presenting a unified front. Rutan announced his lineup: Binnie would fly WhiteKnightOne, the mothership; Melvill would fly SpaceShipOne, with Siebold as his backup. Rutan acknowledged the danger of what they were trying to do, saying, “We are willing to seek breakthroughs by taking

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Allen said they were chasing history. “Tomorrow, we will attempt to add a new page to the aviation history books. If our attempt is successful, SpaceShipOne’s pilot will become the first civilian pilot to ever cross the boundary of space in a completely privately funded vehicle.” Left unsaid was the

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watching through a pair of binoculars, yelled out, “Go, Michael! Go, babe!” The flight started with the usual violent jump, as Melvill fought to point SpaceShipOne straight up. But just eight seconds into the flight, he got pushed off course by the wind. As he struggled with the controls, the engine

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on Rutan’s feather system, the shuttlecock-like device that was to deliver him to ground safely, was malfunctioning. If the stabilizer didn’t work, SpaceShipOne would enter a violent spin, and Melvill could easily be killed on the reentry. This was the moment he was supposed to be celebrating. Melvill

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coming home,” she said, sobbing. “Can we grow old together in rocking chairs?” He said they could. He was, as of now, retired as a SpaceShipOne test pilot. He had made history, earning the first ever “commercial astronaut” wings from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Rutan was ecstatic, and said later

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hot-air balloon rides, was desperate to start a company that could help push what he saw as the ultimate frontier of space. Smitten with SpaceShipOne, and confident that Rutan could build him an even bigger and better spacecraft, one capable of taking fleets of tourists into the cosmos, Branson made

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Allen a generous offer for the rights to the technology behind SpaceShipOne. “Flying test pilots, I understand,” Allen recalled. “But paying-man-on-the-street-type passengers, I wanted to leave that to someone else.” Allen

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faith in all the haste to light a wick under the rocket motor,” Binnie wrote in an unpublished memoir titled “The Magic and Menace of SpaceShipOne.” “He felt that it was unsafe, insufficiently tested and poorly understood. To him, that was three strikes in a critical spaceship system and not

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too much?” Sally Melvill wondered that, too. THE FLIGHT ON September 29 started as expected. WhiteKnightOne climbed into the early morning Mojave sky. It released SpaceShipOne, and then a few seconds later the rocket engine ignited, pinning Melvill back into his seat as he screamed almost straight up in a picture

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From the ground, it looked just as it should. “He’s straight!” Sally Melvill yelled. “He’s straight! He’s absolutely dead straight.” But then SpaceShipOne started to roll. It was slow at first, but the higher he climbed, the faster the spacecraft spun, until soon it was whirling uncontrollably. The

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sticky mess all over me.” He was wet, and the smell of sugary coffee overwhelmed the cockpit. But he was ready. The WhiteKnightOne mothership released SpaceShipOne. Instead of waiting for mission control to give the all clear before igniting the engines, Binnie flipped the switches almost immediately, not wanting to lose

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won’t believe it, but I think we’ve got something even more exciting than the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer here,” he told Branson. It was SpaceShipOne. Knowing Branson would want to seize the opportunity, one of his executives rushed to register the name “Virgin Galactic”—only to find out that Branson

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would carry two pilots and six passengers. A modest iterative step up this was not. Instead, SpaceShipTwo would be a bold advancement, especially given how SpaceShipOne had bucked and rattled its way on its white-knuckled rides into space. But Branson didn’t do incremental, or modest. Despite the daunting task

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first five years. He even promoted Virgin Galactic during a Super Bowl commercial for Volvo in February 2005, just months after obtaining the rights to SpaceShipOne. The ad featured the liftoff of a rocket with a bumper sticker that said, “My other vehicle is a Volvo XC90 V8.” “Introducing the

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and Space Port, was at the far end near Alex Tai and George Whittinghill, who were representing Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which was designing SpaceShipOne’s successor, SpaceShipTwo. Everyone who was anyone in the industry was here. Everyone, that is, except Jeff Bezos, or anyone from Blue Origin. In

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flights soared, as did the number of licensed aircraft. IF THE INDUSTRY was going to have a real impact, the insurgency that had started with SpaceShipOne needed a second act. But some worried that the public’s attention would soon wane, as it did after the Apollo moon landings. After achieving

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industrial mainframes to small desktops, so would space, too, become an individual experience. In addition to that quixotic goal, there was a real immediate concern. SpaceShipOne’s thrilling, white-knuckled flight not only captured the attention of the world, but Congress and the FAA as well. As some in the industry

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But others at the hearing praised the accomplishments of the X Prize and the enthusiasm it generated. Congressman John Mica said that the flight of SpaceShipOne had “launched a whole new era in space.” The flight heralded an exciting future and “altered our vision of what the aviation system of the

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Virgin Galactic, was ready to fly this time. A decade earlier, during the Ansari X Prize, he’d had misgivings about the safety of SpaceShipOne, and dropped out of the program. But he had stuck with the SpaceShipTwo development, and on the morning of October 31 strapped himself into the

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about where he wanted to go. His next rocket would be named New Armstrong. EPILOGUE Again, the Moon PAUL ALLEN COULDN’T stay away. After SpaceShipOne had made history as the first commercial vehicle to reach the edge of space, he had licensed the technology to Richard Branson, unnerved by the

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belly at 35,000 feet and then launch into space. Because of its size, it would be capable of carrying rockets far more powerful than SpaceShipOne as well as carrying satellites, experiments, and eventually astronauts into orbit—not just to the threshold of space. With the Ansari X Prize, Allen

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company’s site in West Texas, April 2, 2016. Courtesy of Blue Origin. Brian Binnie (left), Paul Allen, and Burt Rutan stand in front of SpaceShipOne after Binnie successfully flew the spacecraft in 2004, winning the Ansari X Prize. Copyright © Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC; courtesy of Scaled Composites. Elon Musk gives

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President Barack Obama a tour of SpaceX launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, 2010. Courtesy of NASA/Bill Ingalls. Paul Allen speaks as SpaceShipOne goes on display at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, 2005. Copyright © 2005, Larry Morris/Washington Post. Lori Garver, then the NASA

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just: Jeffrey Ressner, “10 Questions for Jeff Bezos,” Time, July 24, 2005. On March 5, 2005: http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/charon-test-vehicle. 5. “SPACESHIPONE, GOVERNMENTZERO” But unlike other air-launched: Ed Bradley, “The New Space Race,” 60 Minutes, November 7, 2004. “That was a pretty wild ride”: The account

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of the SpaceShipOne flights during the Ansari X Prize comes in large part from Black Sky: Winning the X Prize, the 2005 Discovery Channel documentary about the contest

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prize!: Ibid., 235. But suddenly Siebold: Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship, 360–361. On the morning of the flight: Andrew Torgan, “Making History with SpaceShipOne: Pilot Brian Binnie Recalls Historic Flight,” Space.com, October 2, 2014. “If I was this anxious”: Allen, Idea Man, 240. 6. “SCREW IT, LET’

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172, 197, 257 Alexa, 254 Alexander, Bretton, 170, 179–180 Allen, Paul, 6 anxiety over powered flight tests, 91–92, 108 Branson’s collaboration on SpaceShipOne, 108 commercial space flights, 4 developing spaceplanes and shuttles, 269 human space travel research, 268 passion for space and aviation, 84–85, 265–267 Scaled

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Composites, 84 SpaceShipOne flights, 89–90, 96 Stratolaunch Alsbury, Michael, 212–214, 231–232 Amazon as funding for space exploration, 253–254 business strategy, 14–15 early obscurity

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261 maintaining the startup culture, 75 start up of, 72–73 Anderson, Eric, 249 Anderson, Pamela, 106 Ansari X Prize, 5 Branson’s purchase of SpaceShipOne, 92 congressional hearing on industry oversight, 124–125 Paul Allen and the commercial space movement, 265–266, 268 Paul Allen’s plan with Rutan, 85

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as religion, 109–110 SpaceShipTwo crash, 214–215 training for space flight, 113 trans-Atlantic balloon flight, 101–104 Virgin Atlantic, 104–106 See also SpaceShipOne; SpaceShipTwo; Virgin Galactic Breaux, John, 50 Brevard County Emergency Operations Center, 227 Broadwater, John, 192 Bruno, Tory, 207, 241 Brunson, Doyle, 28–29 bull

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Curiosity rover, 3 Cygnus spacecraft, 210 Davis, Steve, 135, 154, 176, 238 death hazards of space flight, 119–121 Mike Melvill’s escape from, 120 SpaceShipOne explosion, 231–233 SpaceShipTwo explosion, 214 Defense, US Department of, 51 satellite programs after 9/11, 52–54 Soviets’ Sputnik launch, 59–60 weaponization of

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199–200 Explorers Club, 196–198 explosions and crashes, 270 Apollo 1, 121 Falcon 1 rocket, 134–136 Falcon 9 rocket, 203–204, 217–220 SpaceShipOne, 82–84 SpaceShipTwo, 212–216 SpaceX, 239–241 Virgin Galactic ship, 230–232 F-1 engines. See Saturn V rocket FALCON (Force Application and Launch

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–164 perfect landing, 270–271 recycling old materials, 153 return to service, 225–230 Falcon Heavy, 174 Farini, Guillermo, 122–123 fatalities, 119 feather system (SpaceShipOne), 81, 90–91, 108, 211–212, 231 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 270 Falcon 9 landing approval, 227 Melvill’s “commercial astronaut” status, 91 National

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Air and Space Museum party, 42 regulating the emerging industry, 124–126 SpaceShipOne test flights, 96–97 federal funding of space exploration Musk’s rocket technology research, 40–41 NASA and military stranglehold on the sector, 32–33

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–91 New Shepard’s self-guiding system, 222–223 New Shepard’s test flight and landing, 221–223 orbital-class rockets, 224–225 SpaceShipOne’s crash, 82–83 SpaceShipOne’s fourth flight, 96 lasers, rocket propulsion with, 23 The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (television program), 270 Lauer, Matt, 215 launch

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254 manned flight Allen’s anxiety over, 91–92 risks and excitement of, 121–122 Scaled Composites plan, 85–86 See also Ansari X Prize; SpaceShipOne Manning, Rob, 39–40 Mariner missions, 223 Mars colonization and missions, 7 Bezos’s commitment to travel, 258–259 dangers, 121 Falcon 9’s success

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SpaceX Falcon 1 development, 132–134, 155–156 SpaceX partnership for Mars flights, 238, 244–245 squeezing out the private sector, 33–34 success of SpaceShipOne, 96 young Jeff Bezos’s essay for, 65–66 National Air and Space Museum, 42, 73, 116 National Medal of Science, 47 national security concerns

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–119 Mars travel, 243–244 people’s lack of concern over space travel safety, 113 regulating the emerging commercial industry, 118 space shuttle disasters, 117 SpaceShipOne, 93 Tuckerman Ravine, 119 See also death Sarsfield, Liam, 45–48 satellite technology Beal Aerospace, 31–32 Defense satellite launch contracts, 52–54 launching

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130–131 vertical landings, 224 Virgin Atlantic, 104–106 Virgin Cola, 106 Virgin Galactic competition from Blue Origin, 256 creation of, 106–108 creation of SpaceShipOne, 107–108 customer support for space travel, 111–113 Personal Spaceflight Federation’s Valentine’s Day meeting, 115–116 planned Spaceport America launch, 211–212

Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race

by Tim Fernholz · 20 Mar 2018 · 328pp · 96,141 words

the stars above. At the time, there existed only one privately funded, flight-proven vehicle that could take humans up to space. It was called SpaceShipOne, and in 2004 it won the Ansari X Prize by flying a human out of the atmosphere twice in two weeks. The prize had been

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became the first Iranian in space two years later, when she paid a reported $20 million to spend eight days on the International Space Station. SpaceShipOne was designed by Burt Rutan, a legendary engineer credited with creating some of the most innovative planes ever built. He was an eccentric, obsessed with

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capture the private spaceflight prize and backed him with a $20 million investment. Unlike other space engineers, Rutan usually kept one foot in the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne is a space plane. This is a term of art for a vehicle that can reach space through rocket propulsion but also has wings to

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to X-15,” Musk wrote, referring to an experimental US Air Force rocket plane developed in the 1960s. “And Burt Rutan for commercial,” referring to SpaceShipOne, whose groundbreaking flight had occurred just nine years earlier. A fellow wealthy rocket enthusiast, the video-game pioneer John Carmack, chimed in to mediate all

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twice in two weeks. Five years after its inception, the award was still unclaimed, and it would be another four years before Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne claimed it. No major space hardware companies competed; there was far more money to be had in working for the government. The participants hailed from

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-how put the first privately funded, reusable, human-carrying vehicle into space twice in one week. The space shuttle program was still on the ground. SpaceShipOne was constructed by Scaled Composites, Rutan’s Mojave-based experimental aircraft company. He was the kind of guy who sported silver mutton chops, lived in

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plane capable of a nonstop flight around the world and designing kits for hobbyists to build their own lightweight aircraft. Scaled will be remembered for SpaceShipOne and winning Peter Diamandis’s $10 million X Prize, demonstrating that a private company could put people into space without government help. None of the

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under control. Rutan’s key innovation was a large rotating wing that would “feather” upward as the space plane entered the atmosphere. This would force SpaceShipOne to fly belly first, akin to a falling badminton shuttlecock. In 2000, after several years of talk, Rutan convinced Allen that this design would succeed

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. The billionaire funded a joint venture to build SpaceShipOne and win the X Prize. Allen would eventually put $20 million into the project; he hoped to jump-start a new age of commercial space

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summer of 2004, the space shuttle was still grounded when Scaled Composites’ sixty-four-year-old test pilot Mike Melvill pulled the lever that dropped SpaceShipOne from its mother ship. He rocketed into space for the first time, reaching an altitude of just over a hundred kilometers. They were the first

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carried just one passenger and barely made it to the key altitude before veering off its flight path. To satisfy the requirements of the prize, SpaceShipOne would need to fly with six hundred pounds of ballast, equivalent to two passengers plus the pilot. As it stood, the rocket motor on the

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AMRAAM, which were essentially small solid fuel rockets launched by NATO fighter jets during aerial battles. Two such missiles, with their warheads removed, attached to SpaceShipOne at the correct angle and fired at exactly the same time, could hypothetically provide enough oomph to get the vehicle over its invisible finish line

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too much, it would crack the tank. But they needed to wring every last bit of performance they could out of the rocket engine. The SpaceShipOne engineers were convinced that if they monitored the temperature and pressure of the tank attentively and stuck to their procedure of fueling and flying in

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, than strapping missiles to the rocket. Rutan acceded to his team’s wishes. The first flight was an exercise in anxiety. Again piloted by Melville, SpaceShipOne went into a punishing roll almost as soon as the engine was fired. It flew straight up toward space but spun disorientingly around its axis

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hand to witness the flight were Allen and Richard Branson, who had stepped in to license the intellectual property behind SpaceShipOne; he paid Allen $2 million to stencil Virgin’s logo on SpaceShipOne before its record-breaking flight. His plan was to create a bigger vehicle capable of carrying seven paying passengers

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. The edge of space remained just that—the edge. Getting there was symbolic but hardly monetizable in the way putting a satellite into orbit was. SpaceShipOne’s maximum velocity was just over one thousand miles per hour, hardly enough to escape earth’s gravity and reach orbit. It was purpose-built

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design to the Pan Am Clipper.” Even if winning the X Prize was not as impressive as it seemed on its face, the flight of SpaceShipOne provided a compelling counterpoint to a dismal string of recent space disappointments, and a lever to wedge commercial companies into the US space program. Rutan

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flew humans in space for the first time, had taken just over three years and cost less than $3 billion. The success of Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne a week before Griffin’s confirmation hearing showed that the private sector was, at least, capable of executing on the designs and theories of previous

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transit system was robust. Twenty-one plans arrived—from small companies like SpaceX and SpaceDev, which helped build the engines for the X Prize–winning SpaceShipOne, as well as from “prime contractors” like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. While the program was officially agnostic about which companies would be chosen, it became

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: reusing its rockets. Since Richard Branson launched Virgin Galactic, in 2005, it had struggled to deliver on the commercial promise of the X Prize and SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic was partially inspired by Branson’s experience in the airline business, which began in 1984 when his flight to a Caribbean island was

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were the same jets that everyone bought from Boeing and Airbus. He sought to follow the same model with Virgin Galactic, but the market for SpaceShipOne had so far been limited to Paul Allen and the X Prize. To obtain both a mother ship and a passenger-carrying space plane, Branson

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bringing the project back in-house—pushed back Branson’s inaugural flight for years. A decade after Scaled Composites had won the X Prize with SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipTwo—the actual vehicle was dubbed VSS Enterprise—was finally entering the critical stage of its test program. It had already been flown as a

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morning of October 31, 2014, the Enterprise dropped from its mother ship, fifty thousand feet over the Mojave, for its fourth powered test. Just like SpaceShipOne before it, the vehicle relied on adjustable wing booms that would feather up on reentry to slow it down and maintain the correct angle to

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plumbing that precisely fueled the Falcon 9 were distant cousins of the X Prize–winning flight engineers who awoke at 2 a.m. to slosh SpaceShipOne’s nitrous oxide around in a tank until it reached the correct temperature. Trial and error eventually left SpaceX with a process that, it seemed

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, NASA space taxi program bid, 113 Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. See SpaceX space plane, 6, 8. See also SpaceShipOne Spaceship Company, the (TSC), 7 explosion, 210–11 White Knight Two, 211–12 SpaceShipOne, 5–7, 53, 93 physics and engineering of, 95–97 Rutan redesign of X-15, 94–96 success of

Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight

by Chris Dubbs, Emeline Paat-dahlstrom and Charles D. Walker · 1 Jun 2011 · 376pp · 110,796 words

and SpaceShipTwo in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Courtesy ofWimmerSpace.com. 33. Top left: Sir Richard Branson standing beside SpaceShipOne on its maiden suborbital flight, as June 2004. Photograph by Mark Greenberg, courtesy of Virgin Galactic. 34. Bottom left: Sir Richard Branson (left) with Burt

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19. PanAero, Inc., SabreRocket, single-stage rocketplane zo. Pioneer Rocketplane, xP, single-stage rocketplane zi. Scaled Composites, LLC White Knight, (carrier) two-stage plane/rocket, SpaceShipOne (rocket) zz. Starchaser Industries Ltd., Starchaser 4, (booster) two-stage rocket, Thunderbird (capsule) 23. Suborbital Corporation, Cosmopolis XXI, two-stage plane/rocket 24. TCV Rockets

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drop altitude. Attendees at this rollout were treated to a flight demonstration of Rutan's B-52, the White Knight, and a dramatic unveiling of SpaceShipOne from behind a curtained section of the Scaled Composites hangar. Both airplanes looked as though they had flown off the pages of a science fiction

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Proteus, the tandem-winged plane built to investigate the use of aircraft as high-altitude telecommunications relays. In contrast, the pod-shaped experimental rocket ship, SpaceShipOne, looked simple and toylike, with its underbelly painted with blue stars. As on the White Knight, multiple round windows dotted its cabin. Although it was

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glider, a split personality that fit its dual mission of rocketing to the edge of space and then making an unpowered glide back to Earth. SpaceShipOne's flight profile would submit its pilot to 3-4 g during boost phase. At maximum altitude, he would experience about three and one-half

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the pilot having to touch the controls. Instead, the wings would rotate upward-called feathering-slowing the craft with their drag, in a sense turning SpaceShipOne from a bullet into a shuttlecock. This maneuver lessened both the g force and the heat of reentry. At about fifteen miles altitude the wings

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of nowhere with nothing to do but design really cool spaceships." Stinemetze was only twenty-four when he started at Scaled Composites, six years before SpaceShipOne's maiden flight. He was a kid from a small town in Kansas. Growing up, he loved everything about airplanes and, like Rutan, was fascinated

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you are an engineer, if you design it, you have to then be able to build it. By the time work on White Knight and SpaceShipOne was in full swing, Stinemetze had some twenty-five people working for him, a meager num ber compared to the manpower most aerospace companies or

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disposal. But whether in organizational size or aircraft design, simplicity was counted as a strength at Scaled Composites. "Logistics kills you," Stinemetze explains. "People think [SpaceShipOne] is this high-tech thing, but it's not. It's as low tech as we can make it to do the job. It's

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work. Laboring almost around the clock, the AST team managed to get the vehicle and the spaceport operations licensed in the nick of time for SpaceShipOne's planned maiden space flight. "There was so much dependent on it. The government didn't want to fail that," Smith recalled. On a flight

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a prime viewing spot. An estimated twenty thousand eager viewers had come from around the country and across the oceans to see White Knight and SpaceShipOne make their first attempt at a suborbital flight. The festivities had been going on all night, like a giant tailgate party, with DJs blaring techno

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get there from all over. Heard different languages." Smith went in the hangar to watch as Rutan's team worked through the final checks on SpaceShipOne. Meanwhile, in another section of the hanger, Mike Melvill, Rutan's test pilot for twenty-five years, made his final preparations for the launch. If

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his first employee. The couple never left Mojave, and Melvill has since flown every aircraft that Rutan has designed. Prior to this day's flight, SpaceShipOne had been flown only four times, encountering a variety of problems. For the first drop test from altitude on 7 August 2003, the one Melvill

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dubs "the most scary flight," nobody knew how SpaceShipOne would fly or even if it could fly at all. Without wind tunnel testing, they had relied solely on the accuracy of Jim Tighe's

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computer aerodynamic simulations. White Knight lifted SpaceShipOne to forty-seven thousand feet, where the release took place. Because the craft has no engines, Melvill had to glide in slow deliberate circles, managing

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exclaimed on the radio as he glided down to a safe touchdown, much to the delight of a relieved Rutan and his ground crew. On SpaceShipOne's third powered flight, on 13 May 2004, Melvill continued to climb vertically even when his instrument panels went out on him, a bold move

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thought it was a positive that Mike could hang in there and press on." On the day of the first suborbital attempt, Melvill climbed into SpaceShipOne at 6:47 a.m., after an emotional send-off from Sally, who pinned a horseshoe brooch to the left sleeve of his flight suit

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his trusted pilot, said, "Don't worry, Mike; it's just an airplane," before withdrawing his head from the cockpit and sending Melvill off. With SpaceShipOne slung beneath the fuselage, Brian Binnie taxied White Knight onto the runway with Stinemetze on board as flight engineer. "Gee, there's not many people

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we needed so badly on the commercial side of the industry." It took about an hour for White Knight to reach the release altitude for SpaceShipOne. "I really hated the ride up there," Melvill recalled. "No one wants to talk to you. They think you need to sit there and

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hand hovered above the engine cut-off switch. But he rode it out, allowing the full engine burn to blast him out of the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne coasted through the rest of its trajectory, up to 328,491 feet, beating the x PRIZE-required altitude by a fraction. Melvill had time to

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I got a good laugh out of that." Following the flight, Melvill paraded along the rows of people lining the tarmac, standing on top of SpaceShipOne while being pulled by a white pickup truck. At one point Rutan, riding on the truck, came running toward the crowd and returned with a

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white sign. He gave it to Melvill to show the crowd for the photo-op. The sign captured the moment: "SpaceShipOne- GovernmentZero." The sign recalled Rutan's long-running criticisms of our government-run space program, a sentiment he had clearly expressed at a press conference

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for what came next. The insurance representatives said they had actually invited him up because they didn't think Burt Rutan would be successful when SpaceShipOne had to carry the four hundred pounds of additional weight required for the prize. They suggested that Diamandis lower the altitude rules and pay out

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and viewers around the world watched video feed as the flight unfolded smoothly, until the end of the rocket-powered boost. A camera mounted on SpaceShipOne's tail, suddenly revealed a wildly spinning view of the Earth. Something had gone terribly wrong. In the cockpit, Melvill struggled to regain control of

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controlled flight. A few days after, Tighe had it fixed. It was now up to the pilot to deliver in practice. In between the two SpaceShipOne x PRIZE launches, the x PRIZE staff went back to Los Angeles and Santa Monica for a breather. On the evening of the final launch

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contained all the names of the x PRIZE donors who had signed up online and gotten certificates. Less than a week from the first launch, SpaceShipOne and White Knight rolled out again on 4 October, the forty-seventh anniversary of the historic 1957 launch of Sputnik, the event that ignited the

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U.S.-USSR space race. This time the fate of the prize and the success of SpaceShipOne's seventeenth flight rested on the shoulders of pilot Brian Binnie, who had not piloted the craft since the first rocket-powered flight on 17

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17 December flight had celebrated another memorable occasion, the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. Binnie had been chosen for that SpaceShipOne flight because he had the most experience with rocket engines and had been the test director for all the rocket firings. "There were a lot

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dynamics during the first few seconds. All of these things are happening while you're still trying to catch up with yourself." On that flight, SpaceShipOne successfully went over Mach I and became the first privately built supersonic airplane. Unfortunately for Binnie, it ended with a hard landing, collapsing the craft

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be in. Rutan needed a flawless flight to attract commercial business. They needed the performance to get to altitude but also demonstrate the precision of SpaceShipOne. Binnie thought that choosing him to fly made a better story for the public and for the investors. "If a guy who has not even

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focus to stay on the bright side, stay relaxed enough to execute what we thought needed to be done. At 47,100 feet, Stinemetze released SpaceShipOne again, and an instant later Binnie fired the rocket, passing so near the carrier plane that he filled the White Knight cockpit with the roar

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of the hybrid rocket. "Holy crap, that was close," Stinemetze exclaimed. Binnie climbed vertically with no problems. One minute into the flight, SpaceShipOne exceeded three times the speed of sound, a record for any civilian aircraft. "I went scooting right through the x PRIZE altitude and past the

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hard to sell, because it will sell itself. Binnie returned to Mojave with a picture-perfect landing and paraded around the block on top of SpaceShipOne carrying a U.S. flag. After eight years, the prize was finally won. It proved that a small company with a handful of brilliant

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engineers could indeed run a space program for about z percent of the cost of a single shuttle launch. SpaceShipOne, having flown again within a matter of days, had proven the concept of reusability, a feat no other space program or nation could claim.

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It's no longer insane to think of a commercial company doing a manned space flight." No longer insane, indeed. Halfway through the flight, when SpaceShipOne's stabilizers had locked in place for a safe return, Richard Branson shook Paul Allen's hand and slapped Burt Rutan on the back. The

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to be created by Branson. The age of commercial spaceflight was poised to begin. On the one-year anniversary of winning the x PRIZE flight, SpaceShipOne was unveiled in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. It was hung from the ceiling of the Milestones of Flight gallery to

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oblivious to the speeches or to the hundreds of people around him. For the moment, it was just him and the spaceship he lovingly built. SpaceShipOne was already enshrined as an icon of spaceflight history before it had fully played its role in defining spaceflight's future. Screw it; let's

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do it. Richard Branson In September 2004, as the days wound down to SpaceShipOne's first x PRIZE attempt, the age of commercial manned space flight got its own official launch halfway around the globe, in London. Sir Richard

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sixty-seven hours and one minute. In 2003 Will Whitehorn, then Branson's project manager, flew to Mojave on GlobalFlyer business. While there he witnessed SpaceShipOne and White Knight being built on Scaled Composites's shop floor. Whitehorn immediately phoned Branson, his voice full of excitement and a few well-chosen

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would not work. However, the more the Virgin team learned about Rutan's efforts, the more they were convinced he was on the right track. SpaceShipOne's design "ticked all the right boxes for somebody like Sir Richard and myself," Whitehorn noted. They liked Rutan's approach of thinking through the

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was successful. Delicate negotiation between the billionaires eventually resulted in a deal between Virgin and Mojave Space Ventures. Virgin would purchase an exclusive license to SpaceShipOne's core design and technologies and would order five passenger spaceships from Scaled Composites for $50 million. A roughly equivalent amount would be invested in

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members of spaceflight passengers could conceivably ride on WhiteKnightTwo to view their loved ones on SpaceShipTwo rocket into space. SpaceShipTwo is also significantly larger than SpaceShipOne. It can now carry two pilots and six passengers up to a height of sixty-two miles. Tighe explained that he is six foot three

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way down. At eighty thousand feet, SpaceShipTwo will begin its glide and return to land at Mojave Airport, utilizing the same unique feathering mechanism as SpaceShipOne. The spaceflight will be the dramatic conclusion to a three-day training program, details of which are still being finalized. Virgin is developing the training

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written right now, in a hundred different venues, with a hundred different technologies, by a hundred different individuals. Although overshadowed by Mike Melvill's historic SpaceShipOne flight on 2,1 June 2004, an equally significant event occurred in Mojave just four days earlier: the Mojave Airport obtained its launch site operator

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horizontal launches of reusable launch vehicles (RLvs) as well as perform rocket engine testing and vehicle manufacturing. This authorization covered air-launched vehicles such as SpaceShipOne, as well as spacecraft capable of launching from a standard runway like XCOR Aerospace's planned Lynx vehicle. Receiving this designation was a giant leap

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runway." Tortoises aside, the licensing procedure created a learning process for both the Mojave and the FAA office teams, just as it had for licensing SpaceShipOne, as they addressed all of the new issues concerning commercial spaceports. Now that Scaled Composites has rolled out both WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, it is anticipated

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beginning to take an interest in the private spaceflight business. In the United Kingdom a few small private companies emerged in the wake of the SpaceShipOne launches. Others, like Star Chaser, Bristol Aerospace, and Reactions Engines Limited, predate the x PRIZE competition but have long been stuck in the design and

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designer Puma jackets with "ss2 Unveil" logos. It was a glitzy wrapup to the past six years. Back in 2,003, at the unveiling of SpaceShipOne, Rutan had been quick to point out that the event was not about "dreams, predictions, or mockups." It was instead about actual flight hardware and

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the Dawn of the New Millennium. Brookline NY: Hellenic College Press, 2000. Lindbergh, Charles A. The Spirit ofSt. Louis. New York: Scribner, 1953. Linehan, Dan. SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2008. Mailer, Norman. Ofa Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. Maryniak, Gregg. "When Will We See a

Beyond: Our Future in Space

by Chris Impey · 12 Apr 2015 · 370pp · 97,138 words

miles. The only other spaceplanes so far have been NASA’s Space Shuttle, its Russian counterpart Buran (which flew once, in 1988), Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne (which flew seventeen times between 2003 and 2004 and is discussed in chapter 5), and the X-37. The X-37 is a project to

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clever solution was inspired by the way a badminton shuttlecock automatically orients itself correctly with the direction of flight. Allen and Rutan became partners, and SpaceShipOne started taking shape in the California desert (Figure 18). In keeping with his ethos of intuitive, hands-on engineering, Rutan tested the stability of

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SpaceShipOne by throwing a model off a tower. In June 2004, a crowd of 10,000 people watched Rutan’s mother ship, White Knight, haul SpaceShipOne up into the sky. It became the first manned civilian vehicle to reach

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an altitude of 100 kilometers. In September of that year, SpaceShipOne won the X Prize with two flights five days apart. The only sour note came with an argument between Rutan and Allen—the investor wanted

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an experimental jet of the US Air Force; then the 1980s saw the US and Russian versions of a rocket-borne shuttle. Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne was a landmark, the first successful private venture into near space, and the Boeing X-37 is a new rocket-borne spaceplane. Unassuming and soft

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children’s TV show in 1988. Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 and then commissioned Burt Rutan to scale up his SpaceShipOne design to be suitable for space tourism. Whereas SpaceShipOne had one pilot, SpaceShipTwo carries two pilots and six passengers. The carrier aircraft, White Knight II, will take off from a

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me to go on it?”10 Figure 19. The timeline of Virgin Galactic begins with Burt Rutan’s victory in the X Prize competition with SpaceShipOne in 2014, and the selection of a site in southern New Mexico as the launch facility for SpaceShipTwo flights. Progress was put on hold by

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1979 and founded a series of telecommunications companies. Seven organizations spent $100 million trying to win the prize. Burt Rutan succeeded in 2004, and his SpaceShipOne now hangs above Apollo 11 and next to Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian. Two years later, Anousheh Ansari herself became the

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://bigthink.com/users/burtrutan. 6. The excitement of winning the X Prize was captured in the documentary Mojave Magic: A Turtle’s Eye View of SpaceShipOne. This 2005 short film was directed and written by Jim Sayers, produced by Dag Gano and Jim Sayers, and distributed by Desert Turtle Productions. 7

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, 161–62 “Space Oddity,” 142 spaceplanes, 71–72, 85, 144 Spaceport America, 1–6, 105 Space Race, 35–39, 37, 40–43, 50, 55, 139 SpaceShipOne, 72, 85, 85, 88–89, 88, 91 SpaceShipTwo, 88, 101, 105 Space Shuttle, 45, 46, 49, 64, 72, 84, 85, 111–13, 112, 159, 167

The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon!

by Joseph N. Pelton · 5 Nov 2016 · 321pp · 89,109 words

, the founder of SpaceX; Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic; and Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and the man who financed SpaceShipOne, the world’s first successful spaceplane have all said the future will include a vibrant new space economy. They, and others, have said that we

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rocket carrier and launcher that can make large rocket launchers more cost effective. This is similar to Burt Rutan’s White Knight carrier that carried SpaceShipOne aloft but very large. Allen’s exploits just add to the mix of the other corporate titans who are propelling new commercial space ventures to

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3 years. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, however, financed Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites to try. The Rutan team designed the SpaceShipOne spaceplane system that flew into space to an altitude above 100 km and then flew again with a crew within a 5-day period to

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landed on October 4, 2004, an impromptu sign was held up within the crowd that had assembled in the Mojave Desert: “SpaceShipOne, NASA None” (see Fig. 4.3). Fig. 4.3 SpaceShipOne on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum after its historic flight on October 4, 2004 (Image courtesy of

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the National Air and Space Museum.) From the start, the SpaceShipOne flight and the Ansari XPrize was based on an unconventional start-up entrepreneurial model. Not only were all the teams that competed for the prize

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-based navigation Space-based war-fighting systems SpaceHab Spaceplane system aerospace organizations safe and non-polluting development Space Ship 2 Space Swiss Systems (S3) SpaceShipOne and space tourism SpaceShipOne SpaceShipTwo Star wars Stratobus Stratolaunch Subspace/protospace Super automation Super urbanization Syncom 2 T TASI SeeTime Assignment Speech Interpolation (TASI) TDRS SeeTracking and

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure

by Tim Harford · 1 Jun 2011 · 459pp · 103,153 words

’s nothing else to do in Mojave.’) Slung under that eggshell-wing, between White Knight’s catamaran-style twin hulls, was a stubby little appendage, SpaceShipOne. Inside it sat a 63-year-old man named Mike Melvill. The age of private space flight – and with it the potential for space tourism

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than any commercial airliner could reach. White Knight then released Melvill and his craft, which glided for a moment before Melvill fired its rocket engine. SpaceShipOne curved sharply upwards until travelling nearly vertically. It accelerated past the speed of sound within ten seconds; after seventy-six seconds, the engine shut down

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in Mojave’: Leonard David, ‘Brave New World? Next steps planned for private space travel’, Space.com 06 October 2004, http://www.space.com/news/beyond_spaceshipone_041006.html 112 The age of private space flight: Ian Parker, Annals of Aeronautics, ‘The X Prize’, The New Yorker, 4 October 2004; and also

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see the Discovery Channel footage of SpaceShipOne Flight 15P, for instance at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29uQ6fjEozI 114 When first reaching the brink of space: Leonard David, ‘Brave New World

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

by Eric Siegel · 19 Feb 2013 · 502pp · 107,657 words

the number one slot; during the final months of the competition, the team was often in the top echelons. There emerges an uncanny parallel to SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded human spaceflight, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. According to some, this small team, short on resources with a

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: “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos Is the Winner of the $1 Million Netflix Prize!!!!” September 17, 2009. www2.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/bpc.html. Regarding SpaceShipOne and the XPrize: XPrize Foundation, “Ansari X Prize,” XPrize Foundation, updated April 25, 2012. http://space.xprize.org/ansari-x-prize. Netflix Prize team PragmaticTheory

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as contagious on healthcare LinkedIn PA for spam filtering on Twitter viral tweets and posts on YouTube See also Facebook sociology, uplift modeling applications for SpaceShipOne spam filtering Spider-Man (film) sporting events, crime rates and sports cars Sprint SPSS staff behavior. See employees and staff Standard & Poor’s (S&P

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 3 Feb 2015 · 368pp · 96,825 words

, impatient for this same dream, took a different approach. On October 4, 2004, when aviation legend Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE with SpaceShipOne, Sir Richard Branson swooped in to license the winning technology, committing a quarter of a billion dollars to develop Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo—the commercial

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follow-up to SpaceShipOne.4 Next, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos committed over $100 million toward a secretive launch vehicle company called Blue Origin.5 Perhaps most impressive was PayPal

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that doesn’t jeopardize the empire. Virgin Galactic is a fantastic example. In October 2004, when Burt Rutan demonstrated the success of the three-passenger SpaceShipOne vehicle, winning the Ansari XPRIZE, Branson and his team came in with a multi-hundred-million-dollar commitment to scale that design up to an

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. There is extensive discussion with the teams and then, months later, the guidelines are converted into a final set of rules. At the unveiling of SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan noted, “It’s amazing that the rules for the XPRIZE are still valid today, nearly eight years after they were announced in 1996

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, 100–104, 107–8 Mars missions in, 99, 118–19, 128 see also aerospace industry Space Fair, 291n “space selfie,” 180, 189–90, 196, 208 SpaceShipOne, 96, 97, 127, 269 SpaceShipTwo, 96–97 SpaceX, 34, 111, 117, 119, 122, 123 Speed Stick, 152, 154 Spiner, Brent, 180, 200, 207 Spirit of