Space Ship One Launch

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
news
The second flight was flown by the son of a famous Russian aero designer,
I
do not recall which. More problems in the return from orbit left him very
severely injured.

Vladimir Ilyushin. The story does that the craft was only supposed to make
one orbit before re-entry. Soemthing went wrong and he ended up doing
three orbits before landing in China.

The "story" was that he was badly injured and spent months in a Chinese
hospital, the craft having come down in China. The unofficial (though it's
all unofficial) story was that he wasn't badly injured at all.
Russian/Chinese
relations weren't the best at the time and it's said he spent the months
(6 months? More?) in a Chinese prison.

Then came Yuri Gagarin, his flight went according to plan and it was
announced as the first human spaceflight afterward.

I'm not saying it happened this way, of course, but it is plausible.
After
all, the Russians didn't announce their flights beforehand, and there's no
reason to keep them secret if you intend to announce your failures anyway.

Paul

In article
,
"Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Jim Atkins" wrote in message
...
SS1 landed first- WK did a flyby and a nice break over the runway before
landing about 10 minutes later.

Any report of this flight on the net?

Only from every newspaper on the planet with a web site.


and, what kind of aircraft is the White Knight?

It's a Rutan "White Knight", I guess. A one of a kind, developed
specially for this purpose. Presumably it benefitted from earlier
experience with Proteus, though it is configured entirely differently.


It was a great event to see, even if I had to take 12 hour flight across
the Pacific and back -- and sleep in the XCOR hangar -- in order to be
there.

-- Bruce