After the speeches finished I headed up to the stage to take a photo or two. We were supposed to wait for the speakers and the press to go outside first so I intended to put my wait to good use. To my surprise, I was nearly run down by the group of very very important persons and had to squish back against the edge of the stage as Arnold hurried past inches away. Once they were all outside I joined the rest of the merely VIP filing out onto the tarmac at the side door .

It was cold outside, at least down into the twenties. That would not have been so bad except for the rather brisk wind coming down the runway into our faces.

There were a lot of media folk freezing their tuckus off in the Press Stand.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There was music and a deep percussive bang as each of the huge images on the left of the runway flashed to on, starting from the direction in which we could hear the sound of distant engines. Then a white line became visible in the distance, the wing of WhiteKnightTwo. It lengthened as the singing jets grew louder... and then I could see it: the underslung SpaceShipTwo.

It came from out of the dark of a Western night... the first commercial Space Ship. Am I really here? Is it really here?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Is it just love in the eyes of the beholder or is she just plain gorgeous?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Ship and mothership came to a stop in front of us.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A group of four persons went up to the ship for the Christening and the Governors simultaneously smashed bottles of champagne. I had expected the woman with Richard, his daughter, to do this as it seems more in line with centuries of British and American naval tradition.

Left to Right: Holly Branson; Sir Richard Branson on the mike; Governor Richardson; Governor Schwartznegger.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

To my great surprise, we were allowed to move forward right up to the dual vessel. I might say I was almost shocked that in this day of lawyer-induced destruction of our quality of life something as cool and wonderful as this would be allowed. Of course, now that it has been done I am sure they will realize people got to directly experience something amazing and you can not have things like that, now can you?

You would almost imagine this was still a free country: we were allowed to walk right up to her.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

A crowd formed around the nose of SpaceShipTwo.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

It even had sexy nose art like American warbirds of WWII.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

There were too many people at the starboard side of the nose so I started working my way counterclockwise around WhiteKnightTwo. My fingers were numb well before this and when I was taking these photos I could quite literally not feel my finger depressing the shutter button. I could only tell it had happened by watching for the still image to show on the preview screen.

It seems that not very many folk did what I did, so there are not a lot of other photos floating around showing the business end of SpaceShipTwo.

Portside of SS2 nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Like any old spacehand, I went around the other side to look at the most important part of any spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Two ships and four vertical stabilizers.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

As I had hoped, the crowd had mostly headed for the relative warmth of the tents and Absolut vodka by the time I got back to the nose.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

I framed one last shot of the huge ship as I left the tarmac.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

In part six our crowd of future space travelers party on until dire storm warnings force an emergency evacuation.

The previous section of this tale may be found here