Sidebar: The future is coming... did the Mustang herald its arrival at AirVenture?

By ANN Contributor Kevin O'Brien

How exciting is the Ansari X-Prize? Well, here at Aero-News, it's about as exciting as it gets. When we had the chance to hear X-Prize President and Chairman Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, X-Prize Executive Director Gregg Maryniak, and X-Prize Trustee Erik Lindbergh speak, the usual one or two (writer and photog) Aero-News staffers that cover a news event turned into about six or seven.

OK, so that doesn't communicate to you how exciting it is to hear the way that this prize conceived by Dr. Diamandis has totally altered the landscape of private space research in a few short years? Let's try another story....

While Dr. Diamandis was speaking, a sound welled up from somewhere off behind the stage, swelled to a considerable volume, doppler-shifted as it passed, and faded. Somewhere in the sound-processing center of my brain, dusty synapses fired, backfired, and sputtered into life. The sound-classification software compared the waveform to those it had previously filed away, and it produced a hit: Rolls-Royce Merlin, 60-degree V-12, 1650 cubic inches.

I didn't look.

Next to me Tyson Rininger's brain ran the same process on slightly less dusty circuits. He didn't look either.

The press conference continued, and so did the steady passing of departing Merlins. One, two... five....

We didn't look.

Finally, when the sixth Merlin took off, we looked. Oh. P-51D Mustang. We looked at each other and went back to paying attention to the briefing. We never looked at the passing fighters again until after the conference.

The Mustang is a great machine, beautiful and symbolic; the icon of its day. But that day was yesterday. No disrespect to the Mustang, to the heroes who flew them then or the supremely skilled pilots who fly them now is intended, but today, we were looking to the future.

FMI: www.xprize.org