From the Mission Status Center at SpaceFlightNow:

"I don't think I made a mistake. Bear in mind we haven't be able to look closely at the data. We took a real quick look at and none of us are positive what caused that. It is possible that I stepped on a rudder when I shouldn't have. You get older you can do things like that. We will have to look and see what that was.

"It was at no time any worry for me. I knew the rates could be handled. I was very glad to see that I passed the altitude (62-mile threshold for X Prize) and I waited a little bit longer just to get a little altitude in hand and then I shut (the engine) down 11 seconds early. I had 11 seconds more of burn -- I could have gone to 360,000 feet today -- but I didn't think it was worth taking that kind of risk because we have a second flight to do. It is better to get the altitude, bring it back clean and undamaged."

"Part of it is the speed. You are going at a tremendous speed and if you put any kind of a roll into it, it is going to ramp up very fast. But the roll rate was very controllable. I stopped the roll rate just using the normal controls of the airplane.

"I'm not sure what kicked it off. But I'm sure that when we know what it is we will tell everybody what it was. It was probably something that I did. I didn't think it was me last time. But boy when we looked at the data, there it was as big as life.

"So I'm inclined it is something I did. But I never felt uncomfortable.

"And I actually think it helped us," he continued with a smile. "We were spin-stabilized and we managed to keep the trajectory going -- we were perfectly on course. I'm very, very pleased at how it went."

"This is not going to affect the second attempt at all. The vehicle is ready to go. It won't take us but a day or two to put it together."

"It was a comfortable, easy flight. The flight, for me, was great. I came off the hooks (from the White Knight carrier aircraft), started the engine, the engine started up just like clockwork, starting pulling back on the stick, trimming a little bit, and the airplane just went straight up. I couldn't believe how straight it was going. Last time I was all over the sky, and most of that was my own fault. I hate to say that, I actually made a mistake there. I got into it in the yaw-trim system and I got into a PIO (Pilot-Induced Oscillation) and all of that rolling you might have seen on the last flight (in June) was entirely me and not the vehicle.

"This time you didn't see any of that because I figured out the problem and fixed it. So it made a very nice, straight trajectory to the top. Then at the top we got a little bit of rolling motion going but I think it looks good for the crowd if you can roll at the top of the climb," he said prompting laughter in the audience.

"I think we did about 20 turns in roll and there were some pretty high rates there. But Burt has designed a system that allowed me to stop the rates. I turned on the reaction jets and I stopped the rates, brought it to a complete standstill in space. I even had time to pick up a still camera and take some pictures out of the window.

"And then (I) prepared the airplane for the descent and came back in and made a decent landing. And thank heavens for the the good weather. It was great.

"I hope you all enjoyed it. I sure enjoyed the ride."