Mike Melvill

But I think with that, the fact that you have to wear goggles because you don't get anything to protect you from the wind blast, and the fact that you're sat on a truss, which is sheer terror, I'm still going, I'd like to be inside a cockpit.

Maybe the maddest choice would be the scaled composites 226 Raptor that Mike Melville had to sit on and supervise.

I thought about that one.

That was very unique.

This was SpaceShipOne.

In 2004, the first private astronaut, Mike Melvill, blasted this rocket-powered plane into a sub-orbital trajectory, topping 100 kilometers in altitude and only just kissing space.

But it counts.

SpaceShipOne's adventure won its maker, Scaled Composites, the cool 10 million of the Ansari X Prize.

Yeah, I mean, we could go a long ways in the history of scale, but, you know, Burt originally started Rutan Aircraft Factory building plans to build airplanes.

They build, and him and his brother, Mike Melville, and Sally Melville would make these plans for crazy airplanes you could build in your garage with, you know,

beer cooler foam and epoxy.

Yeah, exactly.

One thing I was going to make clear is there were we initially started with four test pilots.

So Doug Shane, who is called VP of the company, number two at the company.

Pete Seabold, we can get into details if you care, Mike Melville, and then Brian.

Doug did the first flight on the mothership.

So you've sat across the camera from some very cool people through New Shepard, obviously, people that everyone knows.

But I would argue that the guys at Spaceship One were like true legends, you know, like Burt Rutan, Brian Binney, Mike Melville.

I mean, this was completely uncharted ground.

A ship that it looks like, you know, I mean, like you described, they were getting pieces from wherever they could get it because they needed to be cost efficient.

And that worked.

That's wild.

And Mike Melville was, correct me if I'm wrong, he was like in his 60s, like 64, 65 when he became a private astronaut, the first private astronaut?

Yeah.