Spectacle
As with SpaceShipOne's previous flight, a crowd of thousands watched from Mojave Spaceport. Television coverage also occurred. SPACE.com provided live video from SpaceShipOne's cockpit.
Distinguished attendees included:
- Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator
- Erik Lindbergh, grandson of the pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh and a member of the X PRIZE Foundation board
- James Cameron, action film director
- John Landis, film director
- William Readdy, astronaut
At 06:09, shortly before planned takeoff, spectators were told to stay at the spaceport after the flight, to hear a "major announcement" about the future of the X PRIZE Foundation. As of October 4, 2004 it appears that no such announcement was actually made.
Spectator reaction was more muted than for SpaceShipOne flight 15P, the first SpaceShipOne flight to have spectators, which was also the first privately-funded human spaceflight.
Read more about this topic: SpaceShipOne Flight 16P
Famous quotes containing the word spectacle:
“The spectacle of misery grew in its crushing volume. There seemed to be no end to the houses full of hunted starved children. Children with dysentery, children with scurvy, children at every stage of starvation.... We learned to know that the barometer of starvation was the number of children deserted in any community.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“The spectacle [of American politics] resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings or die. For our salvation, Mr. Wilbur Wright is providing wings. He will also have to provide a new insect to use them.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Man lording it over man, man kneeling to man, is a spectacle that Gabriel might well travel hitherward to behold; for never did he behold it in heaven.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)