First Privately Funded Manned Spacecraft Reaches Goal

Flight Journal, Oct 2004 by Marks, Bob

Hot off the wire from the world of flight

ON JUNE 21, 2004, thousands anxiously scanned the cloudless blue sky over California's Mojave Airport for a glimpse of the distinctive aircraft that cruised at 47,000 feet. The public address system crackled with the radio conversation that was taking place at the launch point nine miles over their heads.

Perched in the nose of the turbojet-powered White Knight carrier aircraft, test pilot Brian Binnie counted down. "Three, two, one, release."

"Clean release." Dropped free from the spindly aircraft that lofted his delta-wing bullet high over the desert floor, SpaceShipOne (SS1) pilot Mike Melvill flipped up the red safety covers that protected the two toggle switches mounted on the forward edge of his left armrest.

Ten feet behind his head, a valve positioned between the large tank of nitrous oxide and cylinder of HTPB rubber fuel snapped open as pyrotechnic igniters flared. SS1's hybrid rocket motor roared violently to life for the next 76 seconds, long enough to propel Melvill and SS1 to Mach 2.9, to an apogee of 328,491 feet and into the history books as the world's first private-enterprise space program.

Designed, built and tested by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and backed by billionaire investor Paul Alien, the so-called "Tier One" program is hoped to be the precursor to a new era in space flight-one in which ordinary citizens may someday be able to purchase a ride into space.

The flight was far from uneventful. A 60-knot wind shear at 48,000 to 53,000 feet rolled SS1 to the left. After motor burnout, the thermal breaker on an elevon trim actuator, used for primary flight control during supersonic flight, overheated and was slow to reset. This potentially serious malfunction caused the spacecraft to deviate from its planned trajectory. This lowered the anticipated peak altitude and caused the spacecraft to reenter some 20 miles south of the planned "bull's-eye." A switch to a backup power supply freed the balky actuator, and the spacecraft's unintended reentry point was easily within SS1's glide range. Also, a nonstructural fairing over the "long-bell" high-altitude rocket nozzle buckled loudly (and visibly) during reentry but did not create flight-safety-related problems. Twenty-four minutes after release from White Knight, Melvill guided SS7to a perfect landing on Mojave Airport's runway 30 as the crowd thunderously cheered. According to the worldwide aviation sports record-keeping body, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), atmospheric flight ends at 100km (328,084 feet) above mean sea level. Above this altitude, dubbed the Karman Line after Hungarian aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman, aeronautics becomes astronautics and pilots become astronauts. In honor of his new status as an astronaut, the FAA presented Melvili with the first pair of commercial astronaut wings.

Melvili was obviously in awe over his record-breaking flight, in which he spent a portion of his 3½ minutes of weightlessness toying with M&M candies carried in a flight-suit pocket. Standing on the airport ramp near the spacecraft, he addressed the huge crowd. "It was a mind-blowing experience; absolutely an awesome thing."

-Bob Marks