Director Kevin Curran on Brian Binnie's UAP encounter, birth of private spaceflight | Reality Check

In this episode of "Reality Check," Ross Coulthart sits down with Kevin Curran, the cinematographer and director behind "Beyond Blue Sky: The Untold Story of the First Private Astronauts." It's a documentary about the small Mojave Desert team that built SpaceShipOne and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004. Curran takes us inside the trials and tribulations of that race, the engineering long shots, the near-fatal test flights and the redemption arc of pilot Brian Binnie after a hard-landing crash that nearly ended the program. The conversation then turns to the encounter that may have changed history, Binnie's account of seeing roughly a dozen unidentified objects in his backyard six days after SpaceShipOne's first powered flight test in December 2003. Curran tells Ross why he found Binnie credible, how the encounter fits inside the larger arc of one of the most consequential pilots in private spaceflight history, and what he hopes audiences take from a story that begins with rocket science and ends somewhere stranger.

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#BeyondBlueSky #AnsariX #SpaceShipOne

CREDITS

Host: Ross Coulthart

Executive Producer: Andy Gipson

Editorial Producer: Meagan Medick

Segment Producer: Christine Jenkinson

Associate Producer: Will Tomasi

Research Producer: Rob Jones

Editor: Anthony Diasio

On "Reality Check," NewsNation Special Correspondent Ross Coulthart takes a fact-based approach to tackle everything from unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) to mysteries often missing from the headlines.

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CHAPTERS

:00 Intro

3:38 Meet Kevin Curran

6:36 The Race for the X Prize, and Brian Binnie

12:12 Burt Rutan and the Origins of Private Spaceflight

16:00 Strapped to a Rocket with Wings

23:48 Trial, Error, and Near Disaster

30:00 Brian's Backyard Encounter

36:35 Did Private Spaceflight Draw UAP Attention?

40:25 Other Pilots, Other Encounters

42:30 The Final Sprint, and the Risk-Takers Who Won It

46:33 Risking your Friends to Win it All

51:09 Mike Melvill's 29 Spins to Space

53:18 Brian's Second Chance, and the Flight of His Life

57:25 Private Aerospace and is the USA hiding technology?

1:01:04 Has This Changed What Kevin Believes?

1:02:10 Final Thoughts