Last modified 29 December 2009 01:15 Eastern Time
On the morning of 29 September 2004, Scaled Composites launched its aircraft White Knight with a payload intended to go into space. The payload was named SpaceShipOne, and was the first private space craft to succeed to escape from Earth’s atmosphere. What follows is a set of pictures and short clips trying to illustrate what happened. If you view the picture info, note that all times are Eastern time, as I neglected to adjust the camera to Pacific time.
I was located outside of the XCOR Aerospace hanger, using a Canon PowerShot S500 “Digital ELPH” 5MP camera. The uses I had in mind for this camera were largely beyond its capabilities, as it only has a 3x optical zoom, and almost all of the action happened well beyond a reasonable distance from where I was standing. I should have brought my Nikon N80 with the 70-300mm lens, but I didn’t, so you’ll all just have to live with what I had. On the other hand, the S500 can take short movies, which feature I used a bit. Note that any such movie clips may contain fairly loud sound, so you may want to lower your volume settings before clicking anything which says it’s a movie clip.
Here’s a group of stills I’ve prepared from the morning of 29 September 2004, the morning of the first flight. |
Thanks go to Aleta Jackson (shadow) for corrections to the names of aircraft.
I came back to XCOR the afternoon of 3 October 2004 for the “night before launch” party. It was a good time, with a number of people there one might recognize, including Aleta Jackson, Karen Anderson, Henry Vanderbilt, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Herbie Hancock. Herbie Hancock got to fire the Tea Cart Rocket, which is shown in the set of pictures I’ve posted.
For a time, I “worked” as the door ward to the XCOR hanger, to keep people out and aim them at the Burning Man party down the way. Seems some Burning Man staff brought in some buses with a live band and an open bar. I would have gone but I had to watch the door. That was my task. Hey, it beats paying for a hotel room, and I did manage to get some sleep. I’m a dreamer. That’s why I’m here in the first place.
People started showing up around 05:30. I didn’t let ’em in, but I was not the only person there. So we made coffee. We opened up as of 05:45. Stuff started to happen.
Here’s a group of stills I’ve prepared from 3-4 October 2004, Sunday evening/Monday morning of the second flight. |
I’ll probably just keep updating this page as I add things. If you want to contact me, you can e-mail me at this address. All text and graphics here are copyrighted Howard S. Shubs, 2004. Contact me at the e-mail address below if you’re looking for permission to copy, or publish. You may link to me if you like.