Goose the Blog 2.0

SpaceShipOne officially made it to space, 100 kilometers up. That's about ten times higher than commercial aircraft fly, and three times higher than military fighter jets. Pilot Mike Melvill has earned his astronaut wings. For some reason, I find this absolutely astounding, and an amazing accomplishment (Wow! that's a lot of "A"s). I think this feeling might be because the world has been in a bit of a downward spiral for the last few years. This event doesn't change any of that, but it makes me proud to be a homo sapiens sapiens again.

Unfortunately, I couldn't watch or hear a live feed. As far as I could tell, they were either swamped or blocked by the firewall. I'll look for some video - if I find any, I'll link it here.

Congratulations to Mike Melvill, Scaled Composites and the SpaceShipOne team, and human beings everywhere.

Update: Burt Rutan started the project in 1995, and spent $20 million to get here today. Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, helped finance the project. Remember when Mark Shuttleworth and Dennis Tito paid the same amount, each, to visit ISS? It seems they could have built their own rockets, instead of renting space on a Russian Soyuz.