A very large crowd of dignitaries and X-prize guests…along with a whole lot of local folks cheered the White Knight turbojet with SS1 tagging along to a 6:49 a.m. PST takeoff. The launch altitude this flight was 47,100 feet. At 7:49 a.m. PST, flight engineer Matt Stinemetze released the spaceship and test pilot Brian Binnie immediately fired the hybrid rocket motor. This ignition was so quick that Mike & Matt actually heard the rocket burn from inside the WK. The rocket burn lasted for 83 seconds boosting the vehicle to more than 3.09 Mach or 2186 miles an hour. At motor burn out, SpaceShipOne was at 213,000 feet and from there coasted the rest of the way into space reaching an apogee of 367,500 (radar) feet (112 Km). Brian feathered the spaceship as dynamic pressure approached zero during ascent. Like Mike on 16P, Brian used a digital camera to shoot pictures (one of Brian’s photos later appeared on the cover of Aviation Week). He also conducted a series of zero-g experimental flight tests of a small paper SpaceShipOne model. Binnie experienced weightlessness for approximately 3 ½ minutes as the vehicle slowly decelerated to apogee, and then began its fall towards the atmosphere. Maximum Mach during entry was 3.25. During the descent, the pilot experienced a peak deceleration of 5.4 G's at about 105kft altitude. Brian reconfigured the vehicle back to a glider by commanding feather retraction at 51,000 feet and over the next 18 minutes enjoyed a leisurely descent to a graceful landing at Mojave, thus closing the book on our Tier One program. This historic flight not only broke the X-15 record by 13,000 ft, and won the X-prize, but was a picture perfect ending to the program. No anomalies were noted on the flight and SpaceShipOne returned with no maintenance squawks. This last Tier One flight was a testament to what training and good old-fashioned hard work can do.
The 13 month, 17-flight SpaceShipOne flight test program included just six rocket powered flights, three of which flew to space (above 100 Km). In comparison, the X-15 program (which included 3 test aircraft) took 3 years 4 months, and 110 flights to reach 50 miles altitude (80.5 Km), and 4 years 4 months to reach Space (100 Km altitude).

Greeted early in the morning by thousands of eager X-prize onlookers, the White Knight turbojet launch aircraft took off at 7:12 a.m. PST, carrying SpaceShipOne under its fuselage to an altitude of 46,500 feet. At 8:10 a.m. PST, flight engineer Matt Stinemetze released the spaceship and test pilot Mike Melvill quickly fired the hybrid rocket motor. The rocket burn lasted for 77 seconds, boosting the vehicle to more than 2.92 Mach or 2110 miles an hour. At motor burn out, SpaceShipOne was at 180,000 feet and from there it coasted the rest of the way into space reaching an apogee of 337,700 (radar data) feet (103 Km). At 60 seconds into the burn, very large roll-rates were experienced (see description below). The vehicle entered into a right rolling ascent at an initial average roll rate of 190 °/sec. Since the ship was in thin air and quickly leaving the atmosphere, it was not possible to stop the rolls using only aerodynamic flight controls. Melvill did input aerodynamic corrective controls and was able to lower the roll rate to 140°/sec before leaving the atmosphere. Later, after feathering the wing/tail, he used the reaction control system (RCS) to damp the roll rate. Mike was able to completely remove the rates before reaching apogee. He then used a hand-held digital camera to shoot some pictures out the windows. Melvill experienced weightlessness for approximately 3 ½ minutes. The supersonic feathered atmospheric entry was smooth, with only small oscillations. During the descent the spaceship accelerated to Mach 3.0. At max q, approximately 105kft altitude, Mike experienced a peak deceleration of 5.1 G's. Mike reconfigured the vehicle back to a glider by commanding feather retraction at 61,000 feet and over the next 18 minutes enjoyed a leisurely descent to a graceful landing at Mojave, the Nation's first inland Space Port. Mike now holds the world record for the most aileron rolls during a vertical climb! :) SpaceShipOne returned with no maintenance squawks.

SpaceShipOne Flight 16P Anomaly:

Highly publicized in the media, the rolls near the end of the motor burn certainly got our attention. Detailed analysis determined that the rolls resulted from a mild thrust asymmetry, which was unable to be offset by pilot inputs at a flight condition of low directional stability. This flight condition had not been tested on previous flights. The low directional stability occurs only at high mach #’s and at very low (zero or negative) angles of attack. On earlier flights the aircraft still had some lift at high mach numbers and did not approach the low angle of attack regime. On 16P, because Mike did such a great job of turning the corner early in the burn, the later segments of the burn had to be at near zero lift to point the trajectory in the desired direction. At this condition around mach 2.7 the airplane was excited in yaw and then the high dihedral effect resulted in a rolling departure from controlled flight. The fix to this problem that allowed a smooth boost 5 days later on 17P, was to fly a slightly less aggressive initial pull-up. This allowed Brian to avoid the low angle of attack regime when at high Mach. The characteristics of excessive dihedral effect and high-Mach low directional stability will be corrected on future spaceship designs.

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 ½ 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.