Thanks, Canarsie.
FWIW, more on this:
At One Point, 'I Was Deathly Afraid,' New Space Visitor Admits
...A day after he piloted a rocket ship to the cusp of space, he said yesterday that the problems he experienced during the harrowing ascent - including a violent roll to the left and a vital control system gone awry - had led him to expect the worst.
Mr. Melvill, the first person to reach space in a project developed with private financing, recalled in an interview from Mojave, Calif., that he had considered aborting the flight miles above Earth or even trying a high-risk bailout that would surely have doomed the tiny craft, SpaceShipOne.
"I had a sort of resigned feeling in my mind that there was no way to get back with a situation like that," he said in an accent that still bears traces of his native South Africa, 37 years after he moved to the United States...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/national/23pilot.html