The Waiting Is The Hardest Part
By ANN Correspondent Kevin O'Brien
Kevin O'Brien, one of the several reporters ANN has assigned
to the Rutan space mission in Mojave, spent a fitful night Tuesday
-- as we imagine a lot of people at the spaceport did. On the eve
of a great event such as this one, it's time to reflect, time to
remember and time to wonder.
Mojave (CA), Near Midnight, September 28th -- The moon
glows in the sky, full and clean, over the hangar from which the
SpaceShipOne/White Knight combination will issue. We all commented
on the moon last night and it was still with us in the morning: in
the sky, and on our minds.
Some dismiss private space travel as a hobbyhorse of tinkerers
and cranks. Aviation itself was once a backwater populated by
massive government-funded projects and tinkerers in small groups;
nowadays it can be, as on my trip out here, so commonplace that
most of the people in the alloy mailing tube are more focused on
their complaints about seating and food than on the miraculous fact
that they have traveled from coast to coast at 450 knots, for a few
hours' wages, only 100 years after the tinkerers beat the
government projects into space.
Today was a crucial day on the long journey of space travel from
spectacular, to commonplace. If Dr. Peter Diamandis and the Ansari
X-Prize organizers, and the tinkerers and cranks, and their fans
and enthusiasts at the government projects have their way, in the
next century travel outside the atmosphere will become as dull and
boring as travel inside it is now.
It's the part in between that promises to be exciting.
The Tower bears a sign proudly declaring Mojave "America's FIrst
Inland Spaceport." And it is. This is only the second manned flight
into space by private enterprise, and both have taken place here.
(The first was SS1's June 21st Launch).
The takeoff of the SpaceShipOne/White Knight is a choreographed
affair. First the Extra 300 chase plane takes off and circles. Then
White Knight smoothly lifts SpaceShipOne into the air. The Beech
Starship chase plane then takes off (with our Jim Campbell
aboard).
About twenty minutes later a third chase plane, an Alpha Jet,
taxis out. The Alpha Jet can start later; it climbs much faster
than the other machines.
For most of the flight, the two experimental research craft will
be accompanied by chase planes. But once the boost begins,
SpaceShipOne is on its own, and the Alpha Jet falls behind; the
spacecraft is alone until it resumes gliding flight at altitudes
and speeds the military jet can reach.
As the planes climb to altitude the crowd at Mojave are excited,
and pleased, and proud, whether they had anything to do with this
flight or not. Even the firemen here who have, they tell me, "seen
just about every kind of weird airplane that you could imagine."
They know that this is different. This is history.
And even in the rising sun, the full moon hangs over the scene,
as if to say: "So far so good. Now come back to me!"
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