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:
“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)
“What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)