Astronaut Mike Melvill to visit The EAA Texas Fly-In in May 2006

Hondo, Texas
9 December 2005
For Immediate Release

On June 24th, 2005, Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne on its first
flight beyond the official edge of earth's atmosphere into airless,
weightless space.

Friday evening, May 12th, 2006, Melvill, the world's first commercial
astronaut, will arrive at The Texas Fly-In in Hondo, Texas, where he
will take part in the educational Forums to be offered there.

E. A. A. Southwest Regional Fly-In President Stan Shannon made the
announcement today. Shannon and Melvill met at Air Venture Oshkosh
last July, where Melvill and Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne,
had landed in the launch vehicle White Knight to give home-built
airplane enthusiasts a close look at the first civilian space vehicle
and winner of the Ansari X-Prize Competition.

Originally from Durban, South Africa, Melvill moved to the United
States from England in the 1970s and became a U.S. citizen. Melvill
and his wife Sally have one son and four grandchildren.

Melvill is a vice president and general manager of Scaled Composites,
LLC, Burt Rutan's company; he has 24 years of experience as a test
pilot, and has logged nearly 7,000 hours in over 130 types of
aircraft. Melvill has flown the first flights of nine of Rutan's
aircraft designs. He also helped develop the docking system for
SpaceShipOne.

An associate fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots,
Melvill received their Iven C. Kincheloe trophy in 1999 for his work
in high-altitude development testing of Scaled Composites' Model 281
Proteus. Earlier, he built his own Long EZ aircraft, which he flew
around the world with Burt's brother Dick in 1997. He is also the
only person other than Dick Rutan or Jeana Yeager to have piloted the
Voyager aircraft, the first airplane to fly around the world without
stopping or refueling, in 1986.

People attending The EAA Texas Fly-In at Hondo in 2006 can attend
forums on Saturday, May 13th, at which Mike Melvill will discuss how
it was to help design, build and then solo a rocket plane out of the
earth's stratosphere, re-deploy it as a "shuttlecock" glider and
re-enter the atmosphere safely.

Mike will also be the featured speaker at the SWRFI awards dinner on
Saturday night.

More information about Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne and The EAA
Texas Fly-In may be found at www.eaatexasflyini.org.

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Contact:
E. D. Yoes, Jr.
(210) 492-2504