Mike Melvill's First Sub-Orbital Flight Made History in 2004

One of the most startling and indelible of our many aero-memories is five years old today. It involves a point nearly ten miles high, chasing the first of Burt Rutan's space-proven rocketships, and the dawning of a new age in which access to space belongs to everyone.

On June 21st, 2004, Mike Melvill strapped on SpaceShipOne for the first sub-orbital flight in Burt Rutan's dreamship and went out and did what so many have tried... and so few have succeeded in doing... he went to space.

Mike Melvill, then 62, achieved an amazing goal that Monday. He boosted to an altitude of just slightly over 328,000 feet -- 62.5 miles -- becoming the world's first private-industry astronaut. The flight was not without some tense moments. Melvill was forced to resort to some alternate control systems when primary trim systems failed in flight. ANN Publisher Jim Campbell, flying just feet away from Scaled's SpaceShipOne in a Beechcraft Starship chase plane (that followed the combo of WhiteKnight mothership and SpaceShipOne to the launch poiint and then rejoined upon his return from space), was the first to report some indications of possible thermal or load damage on the aft portion of the spacecraft, just in front of the rocket bell. Worst of all... a momentary communications glitch at the apex of Mike's flight caused everyone a few nervous moments until Mike started talking again. Ultimately though, a thorough check by all three chase planes revealed Melvill's ship was sound for landing. He made a perfect touchdown at the airport in Mojave (CA) at 1114 EDT.

ANN had an amazing vantage point for all this... this was the first of a number of flights where ANN's Jim Campbell served as the sole or primary photographer for a number of historic XPrize moments and was aboard the chase ship that shepherded Melvill nearly all the way to his drop point and gave him the once-over just minutes before landing. Jim was aboard the Starship, shooting some of the 400 high-resolution digital images that he captured that day. It was an amazing flight... a dramatic flight... but he also observed and photographed history from about as close as you could possibly get to the world's newest spaceship and astronaut. Our pictures were seen around the world, graced hundreds of newspaper and other periodical covers, since we shot the only air-to-air pool photos of the flight -- though we are pleased to note that these photos (shown above and below) appeared FIRST on ANN.

The visions are indelible, even five years later... but more important than the sights we witnessed that day are the many changes that are in the offing due to the genius and committment of Rutan and his extraordinary team, Melvill's skill, and XPrize Founder Peter Diamandis's uncommon vision of a space future that could belong to anyone. 

Here's Scaled's Mission Summary for Mike and Burt's Grand Adventure:

Flight 60L / 15P
Date: 21 June 04
Flight Time: 1.6 hour / 24 min 05sec  
White Knight Pilot: Binnie White Knight Copilot: Stinemetze
SpaceShipOne Pilot:  Melvill    
High Chase Alpha Jet Crew: Van der Schueren/Johnson
High Chase-Starship Crew: Karkow/Scherer    
Low Chase-Extra Crew: Coleman/Bird

Objectives: First commercial astronaut flight by exceeding 100 kilometers (328,000 ft)

Results: Cheered down the runway by onlookers, the White Knight turbojet launch aircraft took off at 647 a.m. PST, carrying SpaceShipOne under its fuselage to an altitude of 47,000 feet. At 750 a.m. PST, flight engineer Matt Stinemetz released the spaceship and test pilot Mike Melville immediately fired the hybrid rocket motor. The rocket burn lasted for 76 seconds rocketing the vehicle to more than 2.9 Mach or 2150 miles an hour. At motor burn out, SpaceShipOne was at 180,000 feet and from there coasted the rest of the way into space reaching an apogee of 328,491 feet. Melvill experienced weightlessness for approximately 3 minutes as the vehicle slowly decelerated to apogee and then yielding to the pull of gravity commenced its historic return to earth in the craft's unique entry or feathered configuration. During the descent the pilot experienced forces greater than 5.0 G's as the vehicle accelerated again to 2.9 Mach. Melvill reconfigured the vehicle back to a glider at 57,000 feet and over the next 20 minutes enjoyed a leisurely descent to a graceful landing at Mojave, the Nation's first inland Space Port.

SpaceShipOne Flight 15P Anomaly: As mentioned in the post-flight press conference, during SpaceShipOne's historic flight to 100 kilometers on 21 June 2004 there was a flight control malfunction. Late in the boost phase, the vehicle s primary pitch trim control was lost. Scaled views any flight control system anomaly as a serious matter, but to guard against these problems, the vehicle has redundancy on all flight-critical systems, including pitch trim. So when the failure occurred, test pilot Mike Melvill switched to the backup system and continued the planned mission. However, the resulting trajectory excursion had two effects. One, the vehicle didn't climb as high as planned and two, the space ship re-entered south of the intended recovery point. This latter effect, while undesirable, was well within the vehicle's glide capability and SpaceShipOne had no difficulty flying back to Mojave Space Port for a normal landing.

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