Around the time of the 100th anniversary of flight, I began adding the signatures of air and space pioneers to several Orville Wright checks. Wright originally made these checks out to cash so he has signed both the front and back. The first check contains more signatures than the second - I started the second one later. Here's a list of all the pioneers who have added their names to one or more of these documents:
- Orville Wright, pilot for the first powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight (1903)
- Chuck Yeager, the first human to fly faster than sound (1947)
- Bob Hoover, pilot for the chase plane for Yeager's supersonic flight (1947)
- Betty Skelton Frankman, the first female aerobatics pilot in the U.S. (1948)
- Scott Crossfield, the first human to fly twice the speed of sound Mach 2 (1953)
- William "Pete" Knight, the first human to travel at Mach 6 (1957)
- Joe Kittinger, the first human to descend by parachute from the edge of space (1960)
- John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth (1962)
- Pavel Popovich, participant in the first dual flights in space - Vostok 3, 4 (1962)
- Bob White, the first human to reach space in a winged rocketplane (1962)
- Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (1963)
- Jerri Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world (1964)
- Alexei Leonov, the first human to walk in space (1965)
- Wally Schirra, Tom Stafford, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, the first rendezvous in space (1965)
- Dave Scott, crew member of the first docking in space (1966)
- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders, the first humans to leave earth's influence (1968)
- Rusty Schweickart, the first human to spacewalk with a portable life support pack (1969)
- Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, crew for Apollo 11, the first landing on the moon (1969)
Other signers include:
- Paul Weitz, pilot for the first space station mission, Skylab-2 (1973)
- Bryan Allen, pilot of the first human powered flight (1977)
- Paul MacCready, designer of the first human powered aircraft (1977)
- Joe Engle, pilot for the first space shuttle test flights reaching Mach 24 (1981)
- John Young and Bob Crippen, the crew of the first space shuttle mission (1981)
- Sally Ride, the first American woman in space (1983)
- Bruce McCandless, the first human to perform an unthethered free flight in space (1984)
- Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space (1984)
- Jake Garn, the first politician to fly in space (1985)
- Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, crew for the first non-stop flight around the world (1986)
- Richard Branson, the first person to cross the Atlantic by balloon (1986)
- Bertrand Piccard, balloonist for the first non-stop balloon flight around the world (1999)
- Dennis Tito, the world's first privately funded "space flight participant" (2001)
- Steve Fossett, the first human to fly non-stop solo around the world (2002)
- Burt Rutan, designed of the first privately funded journey into space (2004)
- Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, pilots for the first privately funded journey into space (2004)
- Jennifer Trosper, mission manager for Spirit, directing the movements of the first rover to traverse Mars (2004)
- Anousheh Ansari, the world's first female privately funded "space flight participant" (2006)
