Flight 15P of
SpaceShipOne (X0) was the first privately funded
human spaceflight. It took place on June 21, 2004. It was the fourth powered test flight of the
Tier One program, the previous three test flights having reached much lower altitudes. The flight carried only its
pilot,
Mike Melvill, who thus became the first non-governmental
astronaut.
This flight was a full-altitude test. SpaceShipOne was dropped from its carrier aircraft, White Knight, at 14:50 UTC (7:50am PDT), at an altitude of 47,000 feet (14,000 m), and fired its on-board rocket for 76 seconds. It reached a peak altitude of 328,491 feet (100,124 m), becoming the first commercial manned spacecraft to cross the Kármán line. It landed safely at Mojave Air and Space Port, California, 15:14 UTC (8:14am PDT).
Flight 15P was a test flight to prepare Scaled Composites to compete for the Ansari X Prize, the prize for the first non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft. Scaled Composites would win the Ansari X Prize in October 2004 after two more successful flights.
John Watts Young (September 24, 1930 – January 5, 2018) was an American
astronaut,
naval officer and
aviator,
test pilot, and
aeronautical engineer. He became the
ninth person to walk on the Moon as Commander of the
Apollo 16 mission in 1972. Young enjoyed the longest career of any astronaut, becoming the first person to fly six space missions over the course of 42 years of active
NASA service. He is the only person to have piloted and commanded four different classes of spacecraft:
Gemini, the
Apollo command and service module, the
Apollo Lunar Module, and the
Space Shuttle.
Before becoming an astronaut, Young received his Bachelor of Science degree with highest honors in Aeronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and joined the U.S. Navy. After serving at sea during the Korean War he became a naval aviator, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (Class 23), setting several world time-to-climb records as a test pilot. Young left the Navy in 1976 with the rank of captain.
In 1965 Young flew on the first crewed Gemini mission, and then commanded the 1966 Gemini 10 mission. In 1969 during Apollo 10, he became the first person to fly solo around the Moon. He then walked on the Moon and drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon's surface during Apollo 16, and is one of only three people to have flown to the Moon twice.
Young also commanded two flights of Space Shuttle Columbia: STS-1 in 1981, the Space Shuttle program's first launch, and STS-9 in 1983. Young served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1974 to 1987, and retired from NASA in 2004.
