SpaceShipOne First Flight 9/29/2004

[ So I'm writing this down in retrospect to freeze in my memory Wednesday, September 29, 2004. ]

So I have always considered myself a space enthusiast. I'm an avid Science Fiction reader and especially enjoy the classics from Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov who give us probable views of our future. I've struggled recently with the arguments for an against manned space travel and NASA's poor cost/benefit ratings. I've watched in horror the Challenger and Columbia disasters and the awful political internal mess exposed with each crash.

However, the problems with governmental space programs have not dampened my enthusiasm for commercial projects. I've followed the various research efforts and commercial launches with extreme interest because I feel strongly that when we have true space commerce, everything will change. I had known about the X-Prize for many years and had been very disappointed that no one had claimed the US$10 million prize to be the first non-governmental space ship to fly to 100km twice in 2 weeks using the same vehicle.

I didn't find out about Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne until right before they launched in June 21st and became the first privately funded spacecraft to fly above 100km, the unofficial boundary of space. I have known about and following the career of Burt Rutan for some time ever since I saw one of his extremely cool kit airplanes and heard about his Voyager airplane's flight around the world without refueling. But I unfortunately missed that he was getting into the space business so the June launch was an exciting surprise. If I knew about it earlier, I probably would have gone out to see the launch although 12,000 folks showed up and completely overwhelmed security and probably made it very hard to see or hear anything.

But even though I missed the June flight, I still wanted to experience history. I think that years from now we will look back on SpaceShipOne as one of the important milestones of flight. Burt Rutan, the designer and visionary, will be right up there with the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, and Neil Armstrong. I believe that we will see an acceleration in the progress of space travel, business, and exploration, and historians will look back at SpaceShipOne as an extremely important milestone. If my son Tim was a bit older I would have taken him as well, but at 5 he would have not appreciated it nor would he had enjoyed the hours of waiting in the cold and then hot desert. He'll be at my side during future launches for sure.

So when I heard about the X-Prize attempt flights, I immediately made plans to see the first flight scheduled for September 29th. Although the planned October 4th flight would win the X-Prize, I was worried that any issues on 29th would delay the 2nd flight and I would miss it. I flew out to Long Beach just South of Los Angeles on Jet Blue Airlines. Good flight on an efficient, inexpensive airline. Personal, per-seat TVs made the time go by faster, although due to my height no flight can really be called comfortable. I stayed with my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Pat at their pretty house near the UC Long Beach campus where my uncle was a biology professor. They have a nice backyard filled with a small collection of fruit trees and lovely plantings.

Due to the number of people who went in June, we decided to leave early to ensure a decent view. We woke up at 0300 PDT and was on the road by 0330 with plenty of food and, more importantly, water. Our destination was the Mojave Spaceport in Mojave, California. It is the first inland spaceport licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration and is set in a dessert bowl North of LA. We estimated that the trip would take 90 minutes and since they were due to launch at 0600 we decided to leave an extra hour to handle traffic and to get a good vantage. The gates opened at 0400 or something and I'm was sure people were already there. The road had some cars but my Aunt and Uncle would comment every couple of minutes of how little traffic there was compared to Southern California's usual torrent. We wound our way past LA, up into the hills, past the Getty museum, back down into the valley, and then out into the desert. The last stretch of road went in a straight line for probably 60 miles from one side of the desert valley to the other. Quite impressively featureless.

On the North West side of this big desert bowl was a huge wind turbine array. I had see pictures of SpaceShipOne and its launch plane White Knight against the backdrop of the wind turbines but I never thought that it was that close to the space port and SpaceShipOne's home base. When we arrived in Mojave it was still pretty dark although in the pre-dawn haze the turbines were visible churning out the megawatts. The airport is pretty close to the center of "town" which seemed to be mostly sprawl. The entrance had local sheriffs with flares, inside were airport personal directing traffic based on your clearance level: VIP, press, airport, general admission. We were the latter although I found out in retrospect that my attempt to get a press pass through Wired.com actually worked but I never got the message.

As a general admission peons we were routed to the North East of the airport around large dirt areas to a large roped off section. I saw local National Guard and a bevy of ultra-eager ROTC directing cars. Too many chiefs unfortunately but no mirrors or door panels were damaged in the confusion. It looked like there were 500 or so cars there ahead of us. Many of them were campers from people who maybe came in the day before. The air was pretty cold and windy and I was glad to have my wind breaker over my poly shell.

We walked past the concession stands selling SpaceShipOne gear, water bottles, breakfast, folding chairs, pretzels, etc.. I talked to the lady at the pretzel cart who said that she had come down from a town up the coast for the event. We found a spot pretty close to the runway and unfolded our chairs in the dessert dirt and got settled. The general admission area was along the main runway where White Knight would take off and SpaceShipOne would land. To the Northwest about 1/4 mile away was some big storage hangers, then the airport admission area with the general press, then the VIP area. Another mile down the runway was the Scaled Composite hanger which was on the edge of the spaceport.

One we had gotten situated, I decided to walk down towards the Press areas. Because the air here is so dry, 100s and 100s of old airplanes are parked around the Mojave airport. They are just sitting there waiting for a revival of the market for old jumbos -- which will never come. I guess as the companies go out of business someone will have to scrap them at some point. The first airplane I came across was a Vietnam War era Phantom fighter with it's engines torn out. Pretty cool. Next looked to be a DC-10 whose engines were spookily spinning in the early morning wind. It sounded like an all metal merry-go-round at some haunted amusement park. I passed in front of some big hangers with their enormous overlapping wheeled doors and into the press and airport admission area.

This area was for airport personnel, I guess, and people who had airplanes or some relationship with the Mojave spaceport. It was also for the general press and would have been where we would have sat if my press passes had reached me. At the time it looked to be better location with the same number of people but closer to the action. Afterwards, however, I was glad to be in general admission which had far fewer people and therefore better views.

To the NW of the general press area was a huge collection of media trucks. I counted at least 50 trucks with 20+ with huge dishes beaming their feeds to some relay satellite. I wound my way through the trucks and over the wires and equipment but there was still a fence between that area and the VIP section were the real action was happening. Oh well. After 45 minutes or so I headed back through the press area, around the hangers, and back to general admission.

I went back to our seating area and had a sandwich and something to drink. By this time it was significantly brighter although dawn was still a bit away. The wind was still 15-20 knots which was worrisome because they probably would not launch in those conditions. The launch has been immediately pushed back to 0630 local time and then was delayed some more till 0700. Dawn was around 0650 and just before dawn the wind moderated significantly until it was pretty still along the runway. I bet that this was very common for the area.

At about 0657 the first low altitude chase plane took off. It is an acrobatic plane that the SpaceShipOne pilots use to do their G and recovery training. At 0700 we could see White Knight with Space Ship One slung underneath coming down the runway from the Scaled Composite hanger. It passed us and went to the end of the runway to go through their pre-flight checks to a big cheer and waving from the crowd. A minute later the Beach Starship chase plane went by and took up station alongside White Knight at the end of the runway. The Starship is another Rutan design and has a very unique dual push-prop configuration.

At around 0712, White Knight rolled onto the runway and took off to the Northwest with the Starship not long after. At the time I was trying to juggle my own camera as well as the one a colleague loaned me with a longer zoom. As it was I got a semi-bad video of the takeoff and some long off camera shots. Stupid. It would take 45 minutes or so for White Knight and SpaceShipOne to climb up to the release point at 45,000 feet. One of the main things that I regret in hindsight about the day was not bringing my shortwave radio. With it we could have listened better to the pilot and ground control conversations. As it was we had to overhear other folks who had brought their own radios.

At around 0730, the high altitude chase jet took off from the airport. It's job would be to intercept SpaceShipOne at a higher altitude in case of problems. On a previous flight part of the rocket fairing had buckled making quite a racket, and pilot Mike Melville was very relieved to hear that SpaceShipOne was still in one piece when the jet pulled alongside.

White Knight and the other two chase planes continued to climb, circling the field until only White Knight was left since it has a much higher altitude capability. The last couple of 1000s of feet it has to turn on its afterburners to get thrust up in the rare atmosphere. As it approached the drop height it had been moving off to the Northeast so in the event of a critical system failure, wreckage would be less likely to reach the town and airport. They had a PA system setup near us and occasionally would give updates although there was a lot of "I think the space ship is over there" which given that we could not see the speaker nor which direction he was pointing, was pretty silly.

The PA announced that it was close to the drop time and that it was to the Northeast at around 15 degrees off the horizon but we still were looking far too high when the rocket trail was first spotted around 0812. It was really cool watching SpaceShipOne streak upwards through the binoculars. It would have been hard to follow with something with higher resolution. You couldn't see the ship itself but the rocket burn and the resulting smoke trail were very visible. Even at that distance you could see how fast it was going. You felt yourself having to really move the binoculars to follow along as it went from 15 degrees off the horizon to 75 degrees or so in a minute or 3.

At the top of the burn SpaceShipOne started rolling quite fast which really surprised the pilot and ground control. You can see in the picture on the right the corkscrew shape of the smoke trail. I've not heard officially what the Scaled guys think caused the roll although in looking at the video, the pilot does not seem to do anything to cause it. It might some issue with the rocket and asymmetric thrust from the motor could have caused the spin. Web reports seem to indicate that they think it was caused by winds striking the ship at that altitude and since it was heading straight up, the wings were not providing lift nor stabilizing forces. Given the extremely thin atmosphere at that height, I would be surprised that there would be much wind but I'm certainly not an expert.

On the ground we were oblivious to the rolling problems. The PA didn't address it and after the rocket was turned off, those on the ground lost track of the spaceship entirely. At some point the PA announced that SpaceShipOne had 328,000ft or 100km, the goal for the flight and the crowd let out a cheer. This was the 2nd time a civilian spaceship had reached orbit. What a thrill.

We all spent the next 10-15 minutes looking up and trying to spot SpaceShipOne. There were a lot of false reports as people saw White Knight or flecks of dust in their binoculars. At some point however we all saw her making slow circles over the field, initially accompanied by the chase jet and then by the galaxy and training chase planes. My first picture of her circling was at 0830 and I'm sure I'd seen her for a couple of minutes beforehand.

At some point before the flight we learned that Mike Melvill would be flying SpaceShipOne today. At the time I heard it surprised me for a couple of reasons. First off, after his flight on June 21st where he made history becoming the first privately funded astronaut, he made a lot of noises that it was his last test flight -- "I'm too old for this" and stuff. He was joking but I detected a strain of sincerity. He's done something like 40 first flights as one of Burt Rutan's most dependable test pilot over the years and I'm sure that's taxing on both he and his family. Also, he had gotten his astronaut "wings" already. It was only afterwards, watching the Discovery Channel's excellent "Black Sky" program about Space Ship One that I heard that another Scaled test pilot Pete Siebold was supposed to go up but he got sick and was in the hospital, along with his wife who was having their 2nd child, and had to withdraw from the flight. Brian Binnie, the 2rd pilot's last landing had resulted in a crash on the landing and they may have felt that he wasn't ready to be moved up.

So back to SpaceShipOne. She was continuing to circle the field lining up for the landing and bleeding speed and altitude. At this point she is "dead-stick", without any power. This means that they have one chance and one chance only to line up the landing and make it good. This is the same as the Space Shuttle. The runway is pretty darn long so it would be hard to go long. The Scaled team had designed a very cool looking navigation unit which, I believe, allows them to orbit the field with a dot at the end of the runway, basically taking the guess work out of process.

At around 0836 she came around for the last time with the training chase plane right next to her calling our the feet below the wheels and touched down to a cheer from the crowd. Very exciting. She does not have a nose gear rather a skid so I gather she uses her brakes in the back two wheels to both slow her and keep her down the middle of the runway as she coasts to a stop. As she went by the VIP area a couple of chase trucks drove out and followed her down the runway.

Then at 0838, White Knight came down and did a victory pass low across the field and then landed at 0841. A minute later the 3 chase planes made a victory pass over the field with each plane rolling off to make their landing run. Pretty cool. They'd obviously been practicing that maneuver.

Finally we could see SpaceShipOne being towed back from the end of the runway towards the VIP station. They stopped alongside the press area and took questions from the assembled press representatives. We only heard the answers and it was then that we learned about what Mike Melvill called his "victory rolls" at the top of the climb. I'm not sure we knew the full extent of the issue until later. He was very nonchalant about the whole thing but I'm sure at the time they were worried. Certainly the Discovery video of the control room during the flight showed some anxious faces at the end of the rocket burn.

I was very amused to watch NBC Nightly News that evening and see their spin (no pun intended) of the issue. The reporter was obviously not impressed and the main thrust of the story seemed to be that the rolls would give a wild ride to anyone stupid to go on. Short sighted fools. Their tone was entirely different on October 4th when the reported that a pretty much flawless flight had won the X-Prize. But then they showed the footage from the first flight with the rolling. When it comes down to it, any story which you care about will be butchered by the mainstream press. Maybe they just don't care or maybe they don't have the time to ever do a 100% good story. I guess mediocrity is about all we can hope for.

After the press had finished asking Mike Melvill questions, they pulled SpaceShipOne down to the general admissions area at 0920 -- an extremely cool thing to do. In the "Black Sky" program, they talked about the emotion from the Scaled Composite team when during the June flight, they pulled out of the hanger, taxied down the runway, and then saw the 12,000 people who showed up to watch them make history. I can imagine how exciting that was for them to see these people just show up and be excited about their success - their work.

Needless to say, we were clapping, waving, and jockeying for position to take pictures. Mike Melvill was standing up on SpaceShipOne as she came by. He waved to the crowd, saluted, gave the thumbs up, etc.. At some point he hollered "thanks for coming" which got a laugh and cheer from the crowd. As if we wouldn't. SpaceShipOne was being pulled by a pickup truck with a couple of guys sitting on the tailgate. It was only after I checked out my pictures when I got home that I realized that it was Paul Allen and Burt Rutan back there waving at the crowd. Duh.

I was amused to see that there was already a Virgin Galactic emblem on the side of SpaceShipOne as a sponsor even though the deal between Richard Branson, Paul Allen, and Burt Rutan had been announced two days previously. If you've not heard of it, Scaled Composites will be building 5 vessels and ground systems for Branson who will be charging ~US$200,000 for a ride up into space and back. At the time I thought it took a lot of balls to announce the venture before even the 2nd flight into space of SpaceShipOne, especially since the first flight saw some anomalies. I'm sure it shows Rutan's confidence in his design and team, and Branson's confidence in Rutan. They actually had already had a relationship after Rutan made the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft for Branson and Steve Fossett. In the GlobalFlyer, Fossett will try to be the first pilot to fly around the world without refueling.

It is interesting to note that on the side of SpaceShipOne was also a M&M's logo, 7up, X-Prize, Champ Car World Series, and the St. Louis Science Center. St. Louis seems a bit out of place until you realize that the X-Prize's home is there and that it was inspired by the Spirit of St. Louis and the Raymond Orteig prize which Lindbergh won. I also wondered whether the M&M logo was added before or after Mike Mellvill decided to release some of their candies into the cockpit on his first flight in June.

After the crowd had taken its pictures they pulled SpaceShipOne back down towards the VIP area and we packed up, got back into the car, wound our way back through the dirt tracks and access roads, and headed back home. We decided on a quick detour so I could take some pictures of the turbines. Very, very cool.

As a quick postscript, on October 22nd, it was reported that more that 7,000 people had already expressed an interest in flying Space Ship One when Virgin Galaxy starts its flights in 2008. Over US$1.4 billion had already been pledged. Good for them. I also found out that Rutan calls SpaceShipOne his "Tier 1" vehicle. Why? Because he's got more tiers of course: Tier 2 is orbital and tier 3 is inter-planetary. The guy is a visionary and he will be the person I will thank if I ever get a chance to go into space in my lifetime. Every time I see another US$100+ million project done by NASA, all I can think of is what Burt would accomplish with the same resources.

End.

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