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:
“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)
“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938)
“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)