Brian Binnie

Infobox Astronaut
name =William Brian Binnie


type =Commercial Astronaut
nationality =American
date_birth =1953
date_death =
place_birth =West Lafayette, Indiana
place_death =
occupation =Test Pilot
rank =Commander, United States Navy
selection =SpaceShipOne 2003
time =~5 minutes
mission =SpaceShipOne flight 17P
insignia =

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 [cite news |url=http://icstirlingshire.icnetwork.co.uk/observer/news/tm_method=full%26objectid=17409899%26siteid=92391-name_page.html |title=Stirling has a space ace |work=Stirling Observer |date=2006-07-19 |accessdate=2006-11-04] . When Binnie was a teenager the family moved to Boston [cite news |url=http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW04-05/09-0223/features4.html |title=Rocket man |work=Princeton Alumni Weekly |first=Kathy |last=Kiely |date=2005-02-23 |accessdate=2006-11-04] .

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 an Honorary degree from University of Aberdeen [cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/scotland/north_east/5140682.stm |title=Degree for 'first Scot in space' |work=BBC News |date=2006-07-03 |accessdate=2006-11-04] .

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. [ [http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/commercial_space_data/current_licenses/ "Active Commercial Space Licenses", FAA, accessed 2007-02-20] ] His flight set a rocket plane height record, breaking the old record set by the North American X-15 in 1963.

Quotes

References

General references

* [http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/binnie.htm Scaled Composites biography]
* [http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/astronauts/english/binnie_brian.htm Spacefacts biography of Brian Binnie]

pecific references

Further reading

* [http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~cdhall/Space/archives/001329.html Comments on a visit and talk by Binnie] (February 16, 2005)