AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013 - 68

Melvill took an active role in each new aircraft
design and learned all
of them from the
ground up.
LEARNING FLIGHT TEST. Melvill
did much of the test flying on
the Long EZ, as well as all of
Rutan’s subsequent designs—
which included the Beech
Starship, Ares groundattack aircraft, Grizzly
STOL airplane, VisionAire
Vantage, Williams V-Jet,
and Boomerang piston
twin.
“Burt showed me how
to fly the maneuvers in a way
that allowed him to collect
the data he needed to perfect

68 | AOPA PILOT June 2013

OTHERWORLDLY SOUNDS. SpaceShipOne
banged into the atmosphere, shaking and
rocking as the air beneath it thickened. The
air particles were thin and patchy at first,
and the spacecraft pitched fore and aft as
it encountered them at an ever-increasing
speed. Even in its high-drag configuration,
SpaceShipOne accelerated to Mach 2.9 in
the highest reaches of the atmosphere. As
it descended, the forces built steadily to 5

COURTESY OF SCALED COMPOSITES, LLC;

the aerodynamics and performance of the
aircraft,” he said. “The more I did that,
the more he trusted me, and the closer we
worked together.”
Melvill became general manager of
Scaled Composites, and Sally was the
head of human resources. Together they
invested in the company when Rutan
assembled a group that essentially took the
firm private, buying it from a series of corporate owners. The Melvills’ investment
paid off when defense giant NorthropGrumman bought the company in 2007.
Melvill, now 72, is an active general
aviation pilot and flies an Extra 300L as a
chase pilot for SpaceShipTwo flight tests—
but he has no intention of flying any more
spacecraft. “I made a promise to Sally that
I’m done with that,” he said. “We’ve been

married 51 years, and the only way
you get to do that is by honoring your
promises.”
Melvill worked closely with Rutan
for three decades (Melvill retired from
Scaled Composites in 2007), and the two
spoke almost daily. A hands-on pragmatist,
Melvill was a sounding board for Rutan, and
he often was among the first to learn what
the visionary designer was thinking.
“He came into my office almost every
morning,” Melvill said. “He would say
something like, ‘I think we’ve developed
the technical expertise to build a twin, or
a jet.’ But I’ll never forget the day he said
he thought we had the technical expertise
to fly an aircraft into space. It was something I’d never considered. We were doing
a credible job with airplanes that flew about
200 miles an hour—but to get to space, we’d
have to fly at Mach 3. It seemed too ambitious to seriously contemplate, and I was
intimidated.”
Melvill took an active role in each new
aircraft design and learned all of them
from the ground up. White Knight, the aircraft that was to carry SpaceShipOne aloft,
was almost identical inside the cockpit to
the smaller spacecraft. “They were literally

made from the same mold,” Melvill
said. “The only difference inside is
that White Knight has throttles
and engine instruments. Other
than that, they’re exactly the
same.”
Rutan had never
designed a supersonic
aircraft when Scaled
Composites began building SpaceShipOne, and many
experts doubted the twin
tails would survive the resonance that might develop
between them at the broad range
of airspeeds the craft would travel.
“We were confident it would work,”
Melvill said. “But there was no shortage
of doomsday scenarios for all the bad things
that could happen if it didn’t.”
The aircraft was inherently unstable at high speeds, and it required deft
pilot handling. On one of its first powered
flights, the guidance system failed and
Melvill looked out a small side window to
stay oriented. On his second space flight,
another encounter with high-altitude turbulence caused SpaceShipOne to yaw 15
degrees, pitch up 8 degrees, and started a
series of 29 snap rolls that began at 160,000
feet and continued all the way out of the
atmosphere. Melvill tried to counter the
unwanted rolls but realized, “There’s just
not enough air up there to fix that particular problem.”
SpaceShipOne made 17 flights, every
one of which redefined what was then
known to be possible.
AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013

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