SpaceShipOne serves history as one of the most important vehicles ever crafted. It is the first manned spacecraft to be built and flown by a private company. On June 21, 2004, Mike Melvill would light the rocket engine of this ship and zoom past the Kármán line (the 100 kilometer boundary that denotes space) becoming the first individual to earn his FAA Commercial Astronaut Wings.
From an engineering perspective, a more significant event took place during the program as SpaceShipOne became the first private airplane to exceed the speed of sound. Designing a system to fly at high speed in the atomosphere is much more difficult than flying above the atmosphere. The same air that makes the aircraft fly is simultaneously trying to break your ship apart and melt you. As Mike exited the atmosphere, he got a brief respite in which he was able to open a bag of M&M’s and let the candies float about the cabin in weightlessness, but as he fell back into the atmosphere, things got hectic again.
An early design of SpaceShipOne called for forty-four pounds of expensive, proprietary heat shield material, but Rutan opted for a better solution: body putty. This material is traditionally used as a Bondo-like filler, but it was found to have incredible heat-bearing properties, so it was used in high-heat spots of the ship. During Mike’s reentry, this system would be flight tested in high heat for the first time. It functioned beautifully.
As Mike landed, he would welcome a new era of space flight that has yet to show its full potential. Instead of being restricted to government entities, private companies can now fly to space. Instead of war efforts shaping our supersonic airplanes, these new vehicles are shaped by the hopes and dreams of all humanity. Shortly before the birth of supersonic flight, Charlie Chaplin would express a significant idea in his movie, “The Great Dictator”. He said, “The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all…let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.” The men and women behind SpaceShipOne fought and won the first battle for private, peaceful spaceflight.
