- 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 experimentalspaceplane developed byScaled Composites .Binnie was born in
West Lafayette, Indiana , where his Scottish father was a professor of physics atPurdue University . The family returned to Scotland when Binnie was five, and lived inAberdeen (his father taught at Aberdeen University) and later inStirling [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 anaval aviator flying theA-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 theWright 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. OnOctober 4 2004 he piloted SpaceShipOne's secondAnsari X Prize flight, flight 17P, winning the X Prize and becoming the 434th person, and the first native ofScotland , to go into space. Reaching a height of about 112 km, Binnie became only the second person to earn hisastronaut wings on a non-government spacecraft. [ [http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/commercial_space_data/current_licenses/ "Active Commercial Space Licenses", FAA, accessed2007-02-20 ] ] His flight set arocket plane height record, breaking the old record set by theNorth 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 )
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