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3 My love for flight and aircraft design intensified as I grew older.
I earned my bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1998,
and a few months later I was hired on at Scaled Composites in
Mojave, California. Through a little bit of luck and being in the right

place at the right time, I was made project engineer for SpaceShipOne.
Our one-of-a-kind spacecraft was being built for the Ansari X Prize
competition, which was created to help develop the private spaceflight
industry.

4 I spent the next couple of years working many long hours making
dreams a reality. One of the toughest parts of my job was not being
able to tell my family about it. My dad and my brother share my love
for aircraft. They would love to have known all the details of what we

were doing. But the project was top-secret, and I couldn’t say a word.
The one consolation was that my wife, Kit, also worked at Scaled.
We had private discussions sharing our excitement during those
top-secret years.

White Knight and SpaceShipOne take off
together from the Mojave Airport runway.

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