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Brian Binnie is one of the test pilots for
SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane
developed by Scaled Composites.

Binnie, an alumnus of Brown University|Brown and
Princeton University|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-8 Harrier II|AV-8B
Harrier II. He graduated from the United States
Naval Test Pilot School|U.S. Naval Test Pilot
School in 1988. Binnie also copiloted the
Atmopsheric Test Vehicle of the Roton SSTO|Rotary
Rocket.

On 17 December, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the
Wright brothers' first powered flight, Binnie
piloted the first powered test flight of
SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipOne flight 11P|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,
SpaceShipOne_flight_17P|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 become only the
second person to earn his astronaut wings on a
non-government spacecraft. His flight set a rocket
plane height record, breaking the old record set
by the North American X-15 in 1963.

==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." — October 4, 2004, at a
ceremony after completing flight 17P
http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,65212,00.ht
ml

==External link==

*
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/binnie.htm
Scaled Composites biography

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