Brian Binnie
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| Commercial Astronaut | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Born | 1953 West Lafayette, Indiana |
| Occupation1 | Test Pilot |
| Rank | Commander, USN |
| Space time | 30m |
| Selection | SpaceShipOne 2003 |
| Mission(s) | SpaceShipOne flight 17P |
| Mission insignia |  |
| 1 previous or current | |
William Brian Binnie (born 1953) is one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites.
Binnie was born in West Lafayette, Indiana, where his Scottish father was a professor of physics at Purdue University. The family returned to Scotland when Binnie was five, and lived in Aberdeen (his father taught at Aberdeen University) and later in Stirling[1]. When Binnie was a teenager the family moved to Boston [2].
Binnie, an alumnus of Brown and Princeton Universities, served for 20 years in the United States Navy as a naval aviator flying the A-7 Corsair II, A-6 Intruder, F/A-18 Hornet, and AV-8B Harrier II. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1988. Binnie also copiloted the Atmospheric Test Vehicle of the Rotary Rocket. In 2006, he received a Honorary degree from University of Aberdeen [3].
On 17 December 2003, the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight, Binnie piloted the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne, flight 11P, which reached a top speed of Mach 1.2 and a height of 20.7 kilometers. On October 4, 2004 he piloted SpaceShipOne's second Ansari X Prize flight, flight 17P, winning the X Prize and becoming the 434th person, and the first native of Scotland, to go into space. Reaching a height of about 112 km, Binnie became only the second person to earn his astronaut wings on a non-government spacecraft.[4] His flight set a rocket plane height record, breaking the old record set by the North American X-15 in 1963.
Binnie currently appears as a panelist in Miller Lite's "Man Laws" ad campaign.
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[edit] Quotes
| “ | I wake up every morning and thank God I live in a country where all of this is possible. Where you have the Yankee ingenuity to roll up your sleeves, get a band of people who believe in something and go for it and make it happen. It doesn't happen anywhere else. | ” |
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—Brian Binnie, October 4, 2004, after completing flight 17P[5] |
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[edit] References
[edit] General references
[edit] Specific references
- ^ "Stirling has a space ace", Stirling Observer, 2006-07-19. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.
- ^ Kiely, Kathy. "Rocket man", Princeton Alumni Weekly, 2005-02-23. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.
- ^ "Degree for 'first Scot in space'", BBC News, 2006-07-03. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.
- ^ Active Commercial Space Licenses, FAA, accessed 2007-02-20
- ^ Brekke, Dan. "SpaceShipOne Wins the X Prize", Wired magazine, 2004-10-04. Retrieved on 2006-11-04.
[edit] External links
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