Melvill had aboard several hundred pounds of ballast, mostly mementos and memorabilia, including seedlings from the desert and Terrence, a teddy bear that flew with U2 spy flight pilots.
Rutan sent along his college slide rule and the ashes of his mother, who died in 2000. Employees who worked on the project sent tools and other personal objects, in some cases signing releases promising not to sell the items.
Pilot Mike Melvill celebrates on top of SpaceShipOne after landing in Mojave, Calif. His civilian-built plane flew about 337,500 feet into suborbital space.
(Laura Rauch -- AP)
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Nearing the Prize SpaceShipOne made the first of two qualifying flights necessary to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The craft had some difficulties on ascent, rolling wildly, but the pilot gained control.
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Watch a video of SpaceShipOne, which early Wednesday recovered from a wild corkscrew roll on its ascent to safely soar to space and back in a bid to earn a $10 million prize.
_____Background_____
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Civilian Spaceflight Aims at $10 Million Prize (The Washington Post, Sep 28, 2004)
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Helping New Space Industry Lift Off (The Washington Post, Sep 27, 2004)
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Rutan Aims Spaceship At $10 Million Prize (The Washington Post, Jul 28, 2004)
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Starship Private Enterprise (The Washington Post, Jun 22, 2004)
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A Rocket Flight for the Common Man? (The Washington Post, Jun 12, 2004)
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At 8:10 a.m. White Knight released SpaceShipOne. Its rocket boosters ignited a few seconds later, fueled by a combination of nitrous oxide (dentists' laughing gas) and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (a clear rubber), to accelerate to a speed of Mach 3.2, or 2,400 mph.
The plane ascended like a shot, spewing a contrail in the clear, blue sky. Fifty seconds into the rocket's burn, however, it started to roll like a gigantic howitzer shell, eventually making more than 20 rotations as Melvill shut the engines down and coasted into space. "This does not appear to be a scripted maneuver," the webcast commentator announced.
But when Melvill landed at 8:34 a.m. he appeared anything but chastened. "The rocket ran like a dream," he yelled to reporters from the tarmac. "Did I plan the roll? I'd like to say I did, but I didn't. Probably I stepped on something too quickly."
Rutan, however, discounted both pilot error and wind shear, blamed for badly joggling SpaceShipOne during the June flight. Instead, he suggested that the plane had an intrinsic problem with "dihedral effect," in which air buffeting the spacecraft at an angle causes it to roll.
This occurs to some degree in all aircraft, but in SpaceShipOne it happened during every flight and "much too much," Rutan said. "We wrestle with it all the time," he added, but it does not appear to harm either the aircraft or the pilot.
"I didn't have any discomfort," said Melvill, adding that he had many hours of practice coping with the roll during flight simulations. "It was kind of cool. It was a spectacular view watching the world go around."
