©Mark Ollig
On this day 15 years ago, 64-year-old civilian test
pilot Michael Melvill was having the ride of his life.
Melvill was inside a spacecraft called SpaceShipOne,
which was in a sub-orbital trajectory over the Earth.
As he gazed out the small, round cabin window in his
craft, he could see the curvature of the Earth.
What Melvill did next may have surprised a few
folks.
While weightless above the Earth, he opened a bag of
M&M’s and observed the round, colorful candy pieces as they floated inside
the cockpit.
“It was amazing,” Melvill reportedly said.
If it were me experiencing weightlessness, I would
rather see a model of the original “Star Trek” USS Enterprise NCC-1701
floating. Of course, Melvill could eat those M&M’s.
Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites designed the
SpaceShipOne, and the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen provided the $25
million to build and fly the craft.
This aerospace adventure, designated Flight 15P, was
unique because there was no government financial assistance, and NASA was not
involved. This was a purely private civilian commercial effort.
June 21, 2004, Flight 15P took off from the Mojave
Air and Space Port in California, a civilian aerospace test center certified as
a spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration June 17, 2004.
The 28-foot-long, three-seat SpaceshipOne aircraft,
registration number N328KF, was attached to the underbelly of the launching
aircraft, White Knight One, as it took off from the spaceport.
When both reached a height of 47,000 feet,
SpaceshipOne was released from White Knight One over the Mojave Desert.
White Knight One returned to the Mojave Air and
Space Port.
Meanwhile, aboard SpaceShipOne, Melvill ignited the
hybrid nitrous-oxide solid-propellant rocket engines.
He maneuvered the now soaring craft 62.2 miles above
the Earth – 62 miles is considered to be when one officially reaches space.
Melvill, in his spacecraft, spent approximately
three minutes weightless above the atmosphere.
Once SpaceshipOne reentered the Earth’s atmosphere,
it engaged a folded-wing feathering aerobraking technique.
SpaceShipOne landed at the same spaceport runway it
had taken off from in Mojave, CA.
Michael Melvill, at age 64, is the second-oldest
person to have been in space.
NASA astronaut John Glenn became the oldest person
to travel in space at the age of 77, while serving as a mission specialist
aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998.
Glenn is also the first American to orbit the Earth
in the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft in 1962.
Today, SpaceShipOne is on display next to Charles
Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis monoplane and the Bell X-1 rocket-powered
supersonic research airplane at the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, DC.
Another historic flight took place June 21.
June 21, 1908, Glenn H. Curtiss piloted “The June
Bug,” which was a two-blade propeller airplane, using his Curtis air-cooled
40-horsepower V8 engine. It was the first aircraft to fly one kilometer (3,280
feet).
Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first powered
airplane with a four-cylinder gasoline engine producing 12.5 horsepower. It was
called the Wright Flyer, and it flew 20 feet off the ground for a distance of
852 feet Dec. 17, 1903.
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| SpaceShipOne while in Earth's atmosphere |
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| View out the window aboard SpaceShipOne |