Mike Melvill
Test pilot · South Africa · On the map · Astronauts · Lived 1940 to 2026 · aged 85
Michael Winston Melvill was a South African-born American world-record-breaking pilot and one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites.
Mike Melvill is read about 37 times a day, in 16 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 30 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 119 days, one point a day.
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Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne on its first flight past the edge of space, flight 15P on June 21, 2004, thus becoming the first commercial astronaut, and the 435th person to go into space. He was also the pilot on SpaceShipOne's flight 16P, the first competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition.
