Back home after watching Scaled Composites' first attempt at the 100km milestone. I've been up since 2AM on 3 hours sleep, so please bear with any typos. Here's what it was like:
My wife and I set out Sunday afternoon, and got to our motel room in Tehachapi (20 miles northwest of Mojave on CA-58) about 5PM. We'd booked the room 3 weeks ago, and good thing. As we checked in, we found that the clerk had no idea why her motel was completely booked on a Sunday night (never mind the local paper's extensive Sunday coverage). Even after we told her, she didn't get it. Oh well. We ate, walked around a bit, read and got to bed about 10PM.
At 2AM the alarm went off and it all seemed like such a bad idea. But we got going (along with a surprising number of other guests) about 2:40. Now, there's two ways into the Airport, and we came in from the north, which allowed us a right turn in. There was no police traffic control, and the folks coming up from the south had no light or stop sign for their left turn. I was certainly willing to take my turn, but some clown was parked at the head of the other line and afraid to turn until all clear. Like that was going to happen. Oh well. Once into the airport the Civil Air Patrol had things well in hand and our entry money was taken and we parked inside of 10 minutes.
The viewing setup was done well -- the airport folks were well prepared. None of the usual volunteer confusion that you'd normally expect. Even the concessions and hucksters were well organized. There were even enough porta-potties.
As we walked to the viewing area, we noticed that everyone had the one thing we forgot -- chairs. So I hiked back to the car and dumped the contents of our Igloo coooler and dragged that over to our spot. Made a cozy chair for 2 and later proved to be better still -- you can't stand on a canvas chair.
So now it's about 4AM and we've got 2 1/2 hours to kill. So we all sat and talked. One guy next to me flew down from San Jose to Bakersfield by private plane (couldn't land at Mojave unless Scaled said OK). He had an aviation radio, so we got to hear much of the later flight conversation, although a lot of it was jargon or clipped. By the time the White Knight assembly came out, there were maybe 20,000 people there.
At which point the most amazing collection of video electronics appeared, all pointed at the aircraft. I hope that my photos (later) have more plane than back of head and raised camcorder. Or ground or sky. We were near the start end of the runway (VIPs were at the take-off end), but Rachael and I had a good view (especially after we discovered the extra feature of an Igloo cooler). Way cool as the plane-and-rocket assembly climbed slowly into the dawn light.
Now, more waiting as the plane circles the field climbing slowly to 50,000 feet. Took the expected hour. The sky was clear enough that one could see it all the way up with good eyes or binoculars (at 50, I used binoculars), but every now and then haze would obscure it, or everyone nearby would look away at the same time and we'd have to go find the white dot in the light blue sky again. Much fun.
As the appointed hour approached, White Knight/SpaceShipOne was crossing right-to-left under the sun. Right as it reached a point 10 degrees below the sun, our neighbor's aviation radio announced "go for separation." In the next minute SpaceShipOne went from 10 degrees below to about 40 degrees above the sun, neatly bisecting the disk from our angle with a strong contrail. After 75 seconds we heard that the engine had shut down, but it was still climbing. It was unclear what elevation it reached -- it seems that the engine cut off at 220,000 Ft, but it was going pretty fast by that point. Once the contrail ended, the ship was lost to sight.
Then began the game of trying to find it again. We could hear the pilot as he reported attitude and G load (at one point the pilot reported a momentary 8Gs), but no SpaceShipOne. The search was complicated by the larger (and much lower) White Knight and three chase planes, including the really neat StarShip dual pusher turboprop Rutan canard. Nothing but false claims for a while, then BOOM, and a little speck became visible, followed shortly by a vapor trail as it went through some haze. Then in and out of haze, and a bit jumpy, as it decended in a big big hurry.
There was an interesting dance as the chase planes attempted to synch their decent with the spaceplane's, crossing each other several times (hopefully at different altitudes). Then, all of a sudden, there's a rosette of planes surrounding SpaceShipOne at maybe 30,000 feet. They hold this for two orbits of the field, and then the rocket plane turns in for the landing, as the others overfly the field at several hundred feet. It lands right in front of us on the far runway (maybe 150 yards distant), moving pretty fast, and stops in a small cloud of smoke (caused by its drag brake) at the far end. The chase planes then land one at a time.
WOW!
UPDATES: Other comments linked at Blogoshperics
Lots of new flight details at A.E. Brain