First Powered Flight of SpaceShipTwo!

I got in to work early yesterday because Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic were planning the first powered flight of SpaceShipTwo and I wanted to be there to see it. The flight was a complete success! They did a 15 second burn on their hybrid engine and reached supersonic flight.

My coworkers had written down Scaled's frequencies and were listening in on their communications during the flight. It made for a wonderful narration for the video.

All those years of tracking model rocket flights paid off and I took a rather nice shot of the drop and ignition, all the way from nearly 50,000 feet:

I snapped this shot just as one of the chase planes was crossing the moon:

The entire video of the flight:



A big congratulations to Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic, and everyone in the New Space Industry for this awesome achievement!