Space Ship One

want to apologize first off to any of my former English teachers who will have heart failure upon hearing that I actually wrote a book. I think I spelled my doom when I put a poem of mine on the first page of my master’s thesis. It wouldn’t have been so bad if my thesis was about art or literature, but it was about making superconductors with lasers and analyzing them with x-rays and electron beams. Fortunately, this book I write now is not a literary masterpiece, so, any such resulting cardiac irregularities shouldn’t last long or will perhaps be particularly mild.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to get started thanking some pretty fantastic people because without them I would have never been able to pull off a book like this. It has been a long and not so straight­forward journey to get to this point. There are more people to thank than I can reasonably do so on this page. It’s funny how things in life sometimes fall into place after a chain of events occurs that no one could have ever predicted in a million years. That’s what it’s all about, I guess.

I started writing for the California International Airshow’s event program in 2003 thanks to Cindy Rogers. I soon became editor and publisher working for Ginny Brown, who stood behind me and allowed me to create an award-winning event program in just three years. But I was far from alone in this. I met Tyson Rininger during this time. His wonderful photos filled the event programs from cover to cover. It was Tyson who got me on board with MBI. It is impossible to express my full appreciation. I am very fortunate to have been able to include Tyson’s photos of SpaceShipOne’ s first spaceflight and trip to Oshkosh.

I had the opportunity to write about SpaceShipOne and the Ansari X Prize for the Airshow. Lilian, Ray, and Cheryl hooked me up with VIP access during X2, which gave me the chance to met Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Peter Diamandis, Anousheh Ansari, and Sir Richard Branson. In addition, this book would be nowhere if it wasn’t for the tremendous support of Dave Moore from Vulcan. Dave was Paul Allen’s managing director for Tier One. He was there from the beginning for the construction and test flights of SpaceShipOne by Scale Composites. Vulcan contributed a majority of the images used in this book, and Dave shot many of them.

When I made the transition from engineering to writing, David Gitin, a creative writing instructor at Monterey Peninsula College and an incredible poet, was critical to my successful transition. His friend­ship has been invaluable. I left engineering in 2000 with one goal in mind, to write a book. Along the way, not one of my family and friends told me I was mad. They may have thought it, but at least they kept it to themselves. Mom, Dad, Steve, Rob, Jen, Joe, James, Vik, Patty, Zaheer, Pranita, Norma, Charo, Maria, Manuel, Kim, Jerrold Kortney, and, of course, the Princess of the Bottom of the World, thank you so much for understanding.

Last, it’s very difficult to express my amount of gratitude toward MBI and my editor Steve Gansen. Writing this book was more challenging than I could have ever envisioned. Steve was vital in guiding me through the process and helping me reach a dream.

My best thoughts and wishes to you all.

Foreword