'Beyond Blue Sky' Director and SpaceShipOne Project Engineer Interview

You've touched on it a little bit, Kevin.

You got to know Brian, and this was sort of a, a, a sort of originally a one episode of a wider thing.

How did that sort of expand out? 'Cause Brian was writing his memoir at the time you started to, to speak to him, didn't, wasn't he?

Yeah.

So what happened was, um, again, as a reader of aerospace history, I knew enough about the SpaceShipOne story to know that there might be a thread of a, of a really cool story there, and that was me, uh, sniffing out, like, the story about Brian Binnie having...

You know, it was a test program, right? So on the first rocket-powered trust, test flight, he had a hard landing, and if it wasn't for a s- remarkable series of events, he never would've got another chance to climb back into the cockpit of SpaceShipOne on its final flight to win the Ansari X Prize.

And so for me, it was a story initially just reaching out to him of potentially a redemption story, and so I called him up one day.

I tracked down his number and I said, "Here's who I am.

Here's what I wanna do with the rest of my life.

Uh, is there a thread of a story to this?" And he said, "Yeah.

Not only is there something there, but I've been writing a book about it for, at the time, the last 17 years." And it was just a PDF.

Uh, that book was ultimately called The Magic and Menace of SpaceShipOne.

And of course, uh, I asked him if I could read it, and he said yeah.

So he sent me this PDF.

I read it over the course of a weekend, and I'm like, it was a dream for a documentarian because it was a, pretty much a daily account inside this program.

And so we started on the documentary, uh, which was ultimately called Beyond Blue Sky.

When they reached out to you, Matt, and said, "We're making a film about SpaceShipOne," what was your reaction to it?

Honestly, mixed.

Um, in our small little world, we had, uh, had experiences with some people that were less than complimentary, I guess.

Um-

Yeah

...

so you never know from a, you know, editorial or, I don't know how to say it, from a documentary or film world, like, how the editor is gonna portray you, so you're always kinda apprehensive.

Um, but I met Kevin through Brian, and basically came with the, the recommendation, "Hey, we should work with this guy." And so I trust Brian was good friends with him, uh, worked with him through SpaceShipOne and, you know, all the way, uh, until I left Scaled.

And so yeah, y- you're apprehensive, but ultimately met Kevin.