{"id":30,"date":"2004-06-28T00:17:43","date_gmt":"2004-06-28T05:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/?p=30"},"modified":"2004-06-28T00:17:43","modified_gmt":"2004-06-28T05:17:43","slug":"the-flight-of-spaceshipone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"The Flight of SpaceShipOne"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been intrigued this week by the flight of SpaceShipOne, the privately funded sub-orbital spacecraft built by Scaled Composites<\/a>. This week, it became the first non-government sponsored aircraft to reach an altitude of 100km which is widely accepted to be the start of “space”.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned it in this blog, but I am a licensed private pilot. The sad part is that I haven’t flown as PIC (pilot in command) in over 5 years. Shortly after getting my license I got married, bought a house, and a new car. All of the cash that I was using to go flying disappeared into those new things. I don’t regret that happening — I love my wife and love my house. I do have to admit I do miss the flying once and a while. <\/p>\n

It is an amazing feeling to be flying an airplane. I’ll never forgot the day I solo flew an airplane for the first time. As the airplane was lifting off the runway, I remember a big grin spreading across my face and thinking, “Oh my God! I’m flying this thing all by myself!”. A few seconds later I remember thinking, “Oh my God! I’m flying this thing all by myself!” The second time there was no grin though. I’m sure it was more of a frantic, panicked look. Despite that, the flight was a huge success, with three take-offs and three landings. It was an incredible sense of accomplishment to earn those pilot’s wings. I can only imagine what it must feel like for SpaceShipOne’s pilot to earn his Astronaut Wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been intrigued this week by the flight of SpaceShipOne, the privately funded sub-orbital spacecraft built by Scaled Composites. This week, it became the first non-government sponsored aircraft to reach an altitude of 100km which is widely accepted to be the start of “space”. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned it in this blog, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.minnesotageek.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}