Scaled Composite "White Knight" space ship

Friday morning I got up at the crack of dawn so I could drive out to Mojave Airport to see Scaled Composite "White Knight" mother ship carrying the spaceship make one of their test flights.   My husband works for Scaled Composite as a spaceship engineer.  The Spaceship is the world's 1st commercial spaceship. The company is also in the process of designing and making the world's biggest airplane, much bigger than a 747.  Not only do I get to hear about the process and hard work that goes into building this aircraft, I can see history being made with each successful flight.                                                                      

As we were waiting for the flight to happen, my husband took this photo.  It's interesting to see the ground crew do last minute pre-flight check.  Once the spaceship was cleared for take off, I saw the ground crew pack up their gear and the emergency Fire trucks come out and follow the spaceship.   It's rather amazing to see the rather large spaceship take off and climb up into the sky.  When it gets to  a certain altitude (10 miles), the space ship, which is at the center of the mother ship is released. No rockets are fired for this test glide flight, and the space ship takes 10 minutes to descend 10 miles to the runway.  For later test flights this year, the space ship, after release, will light its rocket and blast into space.  To learn more visit their website:  www.scaledcomposite.com.

 

 

While waiting for the space ship to return I did this line drawing of the windmills in the distant and the mountain range in the distant.