Cassini's SOI burn has ended and initial indications have the orbit looking good. Regarding the recent flight of Spaceship One, here's a first person account of the event I received this evening. Patrick :-) "This morning, along with about 15,000 other people and a larger radio and TV audience, I saw a little bit of history unfold at the Mojave Airport. By now you have all seen accounts of it and maybe you were there. The first known civilian spacecraft was launched and the pilot reached about 62 miles altitude before gliding back to a landing on the runway in front of us. I started out from Springville about 10PM and arrived at the airport at 1230.AM. Instead of lining up, the cars were going in and parking under the glare of some portable lights. The west wind was constant and blowing up to about 30 MPH, so it wasn't pleasant outside the car. I found a spot and joined a couple hundred cars already there, the pioneers of thousands that were to arrive over the next 6 hours. Some people were trying to sleep, others standing around bent into the wind which prevented much conversation, and nearly blew a couple's tent away nearby my spot, which was along the fence looking east onto the runway. It started to brighten about 0430 and the sun came up following Venus at about 0540. By this time the crowd had grown enormously, the wind died down quite a bit, and a feeling of growing anticipation also grew with the sunrise. The dozens of porta-potties were doing a brisk business, and people were carting their camp chairs, binoculars, cameras and kids to the area set aside for people to watch. You couldn't take a car over there, so I stayed put even though ultimately I missed some of the roll-out and later exhibition of the spacecraft. I had so much stuff, I didn't want to leave it! Tethered by technology might be a good phrase to describe the situation. While I had gone to make a potty call and checked out the viewing area, a lady from Hanford and a couple from Sonoma had set up more or less in front of the car. I had to reclaim a little space which I did by hauling my 7' scope ladder out and setting it up right between my car and the fence. One of the most remembered things about this trip will be how the local country and western station handled their live coverage of the event. Commentary was indispersed with commercials and very country country music! I found the combination pretty hilarious. Apparently folks over in that area compete to see who can be more country. The Old West is alive and well in the Mojave, yessereebob! Anyhoo, the mothership, called the White Knight with the little rocket plane nestled against its belly finally taxied out and rolled slowly down to the end of the runway. After a few checks by a ground crew, the twin jet finally rolled and started gaining speed at about 0643, a little behind their schedule. By this time it was getting hot and mercifully the wind had all but stopped howling. Two chase planes went before the mother ship and a jet trainer also used as a high altitude chase plane followed a few minutes later. The White Knight gained altitude slowly, and it and the Starship twin pusher turboprop camera chase plane became hard to see at certain atitudes when the Sun didn't glint off their white paint. At about 30,000 feet, all the planes started making contrails, which allowed easy tracking as they made ever widening circles while gaining height to the 50,000 foot launch altitude. They finally made a huge figure 8 and flew off toward the northeast to the launch point. Most of us lost view because by this time they stopped making contrails so were very hard to see. The P.A. announcer and radio commentator did their best to do the countdown and tell us which direction to look, which turned out to be directly into the increasingly blinding Sun. I didn't even try to find the aircraft for fear of being blinded, they were that close, but when the "Ignition!" command came out, everybody cheered and the brown smoke trail of the rocket could be seen coming right up out of the Sun for the 80 second burn of the rocket engine. With the 16x70s I could just see the spacecraft at the end of the whitening plume. The SpaceShipOne little craft then glided upwards after burnout to about 63 miles, making the pilot, Mike Melville, a new astronaut and the first one from a civilian company. The commercialization of manned space had begun! Now the Rutan company and its sponsor for this project, billionaire Paul Allen, will gear up for the flights to win the $10,000,000 Ansari prize, which will require two flights within 2 weeks with either a crew of 3 or the equivalent in weight of 3 people, to the same 100km altitude reached today. If they win the prize, it will repay about 1/2 the $20,000,000 invested so far by Allen. Their goal, they swear, is not to win the prize, but to start civilianizing space, and the prize is incidental. The trip back down from altitude seemed a bit faster (45 mins) than the climb up, but the rocket plane actually glides quite well, and it landed gracefully after making a sweeping turn over the northeast side of the airport. It was followed closely by the chase planes which later did a victory pass over the crowd and the now-landed spaceplane. Their flyby was the most impressive thing that happened that morning physically, and you could tell by the pilots' actions that they were happy happy guys, as well as the audience which broke into spontaneous cheering after the flyby and when the pilot opened the hatch and stepped out of the rocket. Unlike the Shuttle, this plane uses an unexotic fuel with nitrous oxide as the oxidizer, so no after-flight precautions were needed as with the larger vehicle. The South African born pilot was seen by the crowd standing on his craft with both arms raised in a victory salute, and as they towed it back to the hanger, sitting on the fuselage like a steed, which indeed it was. So I got some great memories out of the trip, some halfway shaky video (which I haven't looked at yet), and a desire to go over to Mojave again for the next flight! With this experience I will know just where to go and where to take my ladder! And I have my $10 ticket, some pictures, and a little bit of history."