Words Angie Bautista
At one point or another in our childhood, many of us dreamed of becoming astronauts. The idea of
unearthing the secrets of a world beyond Earth excites philomaths with an unfathomable hunger for discovery.
Plus, the possibility of effortless weightlessness is more than enough to attract sitomaniacs such as yours truly.
For years, this childhood dream remained but a fantasy to many. Only vigorously trained astronauts from the U.S. military or NASA seem to have the right to this dream.
But June 21, 2004 gave light to a dawning era in space exploration. The date marked the first sub-orbital
mission of SpaceShipOne, an aircraft financed, not by the U.S. government, but Scaled Composites, a privately
owned company headed by Burt Rutan. "Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace,"
Rutan said. "We have redefined space travel as we know it."
The mission was also the first with an aircraft manned by a civilian pilot, Mike Melvill. At the age of 63,
Melvill fulfilled a childhood dream that had seemed impossible for a civilian such as himself. Dubbed as the
"people's astronaut," he recalls the experience quite vividly and with obvious appreciation. "The sky was
jet-black above, and it gets very light blue along the horizon. The Earth is so beautiful, the colors of the high
desert and out over the coastline, and all the fog or low stratus that's over L.A. looked exactly like snow,"
Melvill said. "It blew me away, it really did." The flight earned Melvill the first set of commercial astronaut's
wings ever awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration. A representative from the Guinness Book of
World Records presented a plaque recognizing the feat as a space first.
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For full stories, grab a copy of Speed's August 2004 issue in bookstores and newsstands near you.
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