It was a unique moment for a crowd of well-wishers, including this reporter, all with their noses up and pointed skyward at California's Mojave Airport on June 21, 2004.
Releases from its White Knight mothership, with its rocket engine powering the experimental suborbital SpaceShipOne vehicle roared to life, expertly piloted by test pilot Mike Melvill.
That groundbreaking first space flight lasted 24 minutes, glided back to Mojave and slid straight into the history books.
Now, two decades later, Burt Rutan lead craft designer at the company Scaled Composites, reflects on that epic day in an exclusive interview with Space.com.
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After the flight, Rutan saw a sign being held in the crowd. It read: "SpaceShipOne, Government Zero."
"I thought, 'That's cool. Let me see if I can show it with the spaceship,'" Rutan said. 'It wasn't ours. I later found out it was put together by libertarians."
Those words speak volumes. They also underscore a truth that spread its wings that memorable day.
"We were secret for two years during a three-and-a-half-year program. No one knew what we were up to," Rutan said. "Not only did we have no government assistance or government equipment; the government had no idea we were conducting a manned space program," he added.
SpaceShipOne - and the intentions of Rutan and his small team of like-minded visionaries - were publicly revealed in April 2003, when the vehicle was launched. "It was essentially ready to fly," Rutan said, "and we're letting the world know that we're actually going to try to send our test pilots into space."
Related: Facts about SpaceShipOne, the first private spacecraft
Swallowing factor
On that big reveal day, the White Knight aircraft carrier performed an aerobatic display, adding to the atmosphere and sky-high excitement of what was to come, taking a private vehicle where no one had gone before.
"Overall, our program was very similar to the proof-of-concept research aircraft we had created before," Rutan said. But admittedly, there was a significant gulp factor when SpaceShipOne first flew.
Before the first spaceflight, Rutan recalled an aerodynamics expert looking at SpaceShipOne and its new articulated spacecraft. "spring" system. That unique feature was that the trailing half of the wing and the twin tail booms could be folded upward for atmospheric reentry, a position designed to increase drag but keep the vehicle stable during descent.
"That expert told me it will spin like a top; it wouldn't be controllable if it's in feathers," Rutan said. "You know, I didn't have a good answer for him."
Rutan said he based his decision on unclear information.
"I had no wind tunnel data in the feathered configuration. I had limited computational fluid dynamics data... no analysis of the dynamics. I couldn't tell if he was right."
Concern resolved
When SpaceShipOne was dropped from the White Knight aircraft carrier at 40,000 feet, pilot Mike Melvill said nothing, according to Rutan.
"That gives you a wrinkle when nothing else does," Rutan said. "And I'm thinking, 'Tell us how the hell he flies.' And I'll never forget when he said, 'It flies like a dream.' At that moment, one of the biggest concerns I had was resolved."
SpaceShipOne sped from transonic to supersonic speed, carrying its own speed rocket ship engine for 15 seconds, and ascending to just over 60 miles above Earth. That's why she has the Kárman Line a generally recognized definition of the limit of space.
"I thought if we had poor flying skills, we would accelerate so quickly," Rutan said, "that you would quickly see through it."
When the rocket motor shut down, SpaceShipOne entered low speed and the suspension system engaged. The vehicle was successfully maneuvered into asphalt heaven.
Above the fold
"I realized it was historic to achieve non-governmental human spaceflight," Rutan said. The flight performance received "above the fold" newspaper attention around the world.
"It was story number two of all of 2004. If they hadn't pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole that year," Rutan said, "this would have been story number one!"
Later that year, SpaceShipOne made two back-to-back suborbital flights well above 60 miles, first solo piloted by Melvill and then Brian Binnie, to explore the Ansari X Prize purse of $10 million.
For Rutan, SpaceShipOne's journey that day was a huge milestone. "It should be a party every ten years. And certainly on the 50th and 100th anniversary it should be a big party."
Ambitious inspiration
"I suspect only the true space diehards are aware that the first SpaceShipOne suborbital space flight, piloted by Mike Melvill, took place 20 years ago this week," says Alan Ladwig, author of "See You In Orbit? Our Dream Of Spaceflight" (After Orbit Productions, 2019). 'It was an important milestone for space tourism."
Because it was the first time a privately built, privately financed spacecraft had reached the final frontier, Melvill's critical test flight did attract media and public attention at the time, as Rutan noted. "The event was billed as a new era in which 'ordinary' people, private citizens, would have the opportunity to fly and gain experiences. weightlessness Ladwig said.
When the X-Prize was announced in 1996, which would later be renamed the Ansari would be.
"Like many space achievements, these predictions turned out to be ambitious," Ladwig said.
Related: Space tourism, twenty years in the making, is finally ready for launch
Industrial space tourism
After SpaceShipOne's successful first spaceflight, Ladwig recalls Rutan promising that suborbital flights would "inspire and open up a new industry."
'This prediction has come true. Both Virgo Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue origin now operates passenger services, but the high ticket price prevents many from realizing their dream of space flight," said Ladwig. (Virgin Galactic currently charges $450,000 per seat for a suborbital trip; Blue Origin has not disclosed ticket prices.)
And the connection between Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipOne is quite strong; Virgin has operated seven commercial suborbital flights to date, all using the recently retired VSS Unity spaceplane. Unity is one SpaceshipTwo vehicle, which, as the name suggests, is an evolved version of the groundbreaking SpaceShipOne.
Highlighting the challenge of providing commercial services to and from suborbital space, Ladwig said it is worth remembering that the Ansari to help you realize a space experience."
Over the past fifty years, experts have made bold predictions for a booming space tourism industry, Ladwig says.
For example, a space tourism method predicted that. By 2030, around five million passengers could travel to a chain of hotels low Earth orbit.
"It will take an extreme acceleration in flights to reach such numbers," Ladwig suggests. "But Melvill's historic flight gave hope to anyone who dreams of seeing Earth from an orbital perspective."
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Spark of innovation
"SpaceShipOne's award-winning second flight during its 2004 , DC
"It took much longer to develop the reality than the initiators had hoped," Weitekamp told Space.com. "But the Ansari X Prize competition did lead to innovations that sparked renewed interest in suborbital human spaceflight."
Weitekamp added that the flown SpaceShipOne will go back on public display at the National Air and Space Museum building on the National Mall when the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall reopens.
To learn more about Burt Rutan's notable contributions to aerospace, visit the informative and comprehensive BRAB website (Burt Rutan AutoBio). a work-in-progress collection he started in 2020.