SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill, a 35-year AOPA member, will be the featured speaker at the AOPA Expo opening luncheon October 21 in Long Beach, California.

"We congratulate Mike and the entire SpaceShipOne team on the second successful flight of a general aviation spacecraft," said AOPA President Phil Boyer. "We know that everyone attending Expo is excited to hear Mike tell us more about his astronaut experiences."

Melvill will present and narrate a special video of the space flights and take questions from the Expo audience.

"My wife and I are really looking forward to attending the AOPA convention this year," said Melvill.

Mike Melvill is vice president/general manager and a test pilot for Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, LLC, based in Mojave, California. He has some 7,000 hours in 123 types of fixed-wing aircraft, 11 types of rotary-wing aircraft, and one spacecraft. He became the first person to pilot a general aviation craft into space on June 21 as he guided SpaceShipOne to an altitude of nearly 62 miles above the earth on its maiden space flight.

FMI: www.aopa.org, www.scaled.com, www.xprize.org