by Mark Lugris
As spaceshipone landed safely on the Mojave Desert runway, one couldn't help but recall these legendary words:
spaceshipone, the first privately manned space flight will surely land civilian pilot, now turned astronaut, Mike Melvill in the history books. spaceshipone flew to 100 kilometers (62 miles) in altitude, leaving the Earth's atmosphere and shooting into space, evoking Einstein's thoughts:
spaceshipone took off at 9:45 a.m. ET and one hour later at 47,000 feet, Melvill set off the hybrid rocket motor of spaceshipone. As spaceshipone shot off through the Mojave desert skies, defying previous constraints, Melvill touched with spaceshipone the future that we had up to now only dreamed.
After safely landing spaceshipone, Melvill recalled:
spaceshipone was designed by Scaled Composites and was backed by Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, who joined Burt Rutan, the aviation designer of spaceshipone. Melvill, a test pilot and vice president of Scaled Composites, attained with spaceshipone the highest-altitude ever reached by a non-government aerospace program.
With the spaceshipone flight, project officials are preparing for back-to-back flight missions to win the Ansari X Prize. This international competition can be won by spaceshipone if it succeeds in creating a reusable aircraft that can send three passengers into sub-orbital space, return them to Earth and repeat the launch of spaceshipone two weeks later.
Related Articles
Neil Armstrong quotes (American astronaut, the first man to set foot on the Moon, b.1930)
Albert Einstein quotes (German born American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)
Mike Melvill quotes (American pilot of the first privately funded SpaceShipOne)
Thomas Mann quotes (German novelist and essayist , 1875-1955)