TAKE ME OUT TO THE BLACK

Many of you probably know that Scaled Composites’ entry into the Ansari X Prize competition, SpaceShipOne, made its first successful X Prize flight yesterday, firing a pilot and the mass equivalent of two terrified passengers up 63.9 miles, apparently the edge of space. They only have to repeat the feat in under 2 weeks to get the $10 million prize, which will come no where near to recouping their investment. But maybe this will. Anyway, as always there was minor problem when the ship started spinning and rolling. This was brushed off by the team and the pilot, Michael Melville, as follows (NYTimes):

Mr. Rutan’s team initially called the roll a “flight-control anomaly.” Mr. Melvill, 63, suggested that he might have accidentally caused the problem himself. “It’s possible I stepped on a rudder when I shouldn’t have – when you get older, you do things like that,” he said with a smile.

Mr. Melvill joked that it was an unintentional “victory roll,” and said that he had been so well conditioned to deal with such problems that he never felt that he was in danger, and did not even feel discomfort. “I thought it was kind of cool,” he said.