“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
President John F. Kennedy in an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961
As of 2018, according to Wikipedia, 562 individuals from 37 countries have achieved space flight – that is a flight reaching a minimum altitude of at least 80 kilometers or 50 miles above the earth. Accomplishing such a feat earns one the title of astronaut or star voyager.
One of those few individuals who have achieved space flight is Brian Binnie. As pilot of the unique winged spacecraft – SpaceShip One in 2004, Binnie is arguably the first Scottish astronaut.
Photo courtesy Brian Binnie
Brian Binnie returns to Earth after safely piloting Saceship One to almost 70 miles above the Earth. Photograph by D Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Brian Bennie was born to Scottish parents in April 1953 in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. At the tender age of 5 the family returned to their native Scotland and lived in Aberdeen where his father taught at Aberdeen University. Years later, as a teenager, Binnie and his family returned to the USA making their home in Boston.
Brian Binnie went on to join the US Navy and served 21 years as an aviator and test pilot. Even with the typical flight test background, his entry into the astronaut corps was anything but typical. Rather than riding a rocket into space as part of a NASA crew, Binnie earned his astronaut wings as one of the two pilots who flew the revolutionary Spaceship One winged spacecraft in suborbital flight. Designed by Burt Rutan and built by his company Scaled Composites, Binnie made the first test flight of the spacecraft and then on October 4, 2004 he piloted the ship’s second flight within a week’s time to claim the $10-million Ansari X Prize. The X-Prize was offered for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space, twice within two weeks. At the time he was the 435th person to go into space and just the 2nd to earn a set of Astronaut wings from the US Federal Aviation Administration for a flight aboard a private commercial spacecraft. His flight peaked at an altitude of 69.6 miles or 112 kilometers setting a winged altitude record for suborbital flight, breaking the previous record set by the X-15 rocket plane in 1963.
Spaceship One and its mother aircraft/launch vehicle were designed and built by Burt Rutan and the team at Scaled Composites in 3.5 years and at a cost of 25 million dollars. With a first flight piloted by Mike Melville and the second by Brian Binnie, the team won the $10-million dollar Ansari X Prize. (Photo credit: Scaled Composites)
After years with Scaled Composites, Binnie joined XCOR aerospace as a senior engineer and test pilot. Following the success of SpaceShip One, Rutan joined with Sir Richard Branson and formed a joint venture called The Space Ship Company to build Spaceship Two which they hope will eventually carry paying passengers on suborbital sightseeing flights from a spaceport in New Mexico, USA.
Binnie too is a proponent of such suborbital spaceflights and is hopeful Scotland may see a role in this future evolution of space travel and already sites in Scotland are being considered as the location of the first UK spaceport. At the outset of our wide ranging conversation about spaceflight, past, present and future, Binnie reflected on how his Scottish Mum set the seed that sent him to the stars.
KEY POINTS:
06:25 How his Mum set his sights on being an astronaut as a young boy in Scotland
09:15 Why he did not become a NASA astronaut
12:00 What is your outstanding memory of the Space Race from your youth?
14:55 How should we remember the men who went to the moon?
19:15 Has robotic space exploration dulled the public’s excitement, do we need manned missions again?
22:15 What was it like piloting Spaceship One?
28:30 Should Scotland be in the suborbital flight tourism business?
33:45 How do you hope history will remember you and the Spaceship One project?
37:30 What did your Mum think of your success?
For More Information:
Brian has recounts his flying career and the many roads in life that sent him to the stars on the record breaking flight of Space Ship One in this personal account, titled “The Magic and Menace of Spaceship One.” From its earliest engineering to the final changes and including hundreds of photos, charts, diagrams and reports the book is not just Binnie’s story but it tells why Spaceship One is one of only five manned space vehicles displayed at the National Air and Space Museum.
•The Magic and Menace of Spaceship One
•How Spaceship One Launched Commercial Spaceflight (Space.com article)