There were no less than four serious malfunctions during the flight. There were un-planned rolls during the rocket firing, it cut off early, some strange banging noises from the rear during flight, and there was some loss of attitude control up in space. All in all, Mike was lucky to make it back in one piece. While they had planned to pass the goal by 20,000 feet, they ended up only getting to 100.12km, or 310 feet past. Cutting it rather close. Burt has some serious repair work to take care of before this thing goes up in the air again, and he's said that most likely they'll need another test flight before trying for the x-prise. (The x-prize group has also mentioned that they require 50 days advanced notice before an attempt, and so far they haven't received any notice from anybody.)

I found a few more pictures from various articles. The best ones are of SS1 coming back in for landing. Here's one taken from the chase plane, as it passes over the parking lot (I'm there in the fourth row, silver van, near the bottom):

You can also see the crowds on the flight line as it lined up for touchdown on the runway,

And finally a view from the crowds. I'm not sure what's in the background there. It looks kind of like the outskirts of the Mos Eisley spaceport, but its just the local fauna and accumulated junk of Mojave.

As far as going back, I've been thinking about what it would mean for me and for the space program. Out of the three possible upcoming launches, I think I might go back for the final x-prize attempt. That would be when the prize was won. Maybe there'd be some cooler stuff at the merchandise tent by then, though we scored this last time by waiting until the launch, and then picking up "I was there" postcards which had been postmarked with the date. The rest of the stuff--tshirts, hats, cups--was all available on the web site, which takes all the fun out of it.

Some suggestions for the crowds returning next time (and the times after that):

• Fix the sound system -- while there were a long row of speakers setup for relaying the news and chatter during the event, the sound system appeared to die about 5:10AM during pre-flight, and never returned.
• Let the radio stations stay connected -- the local FM station was willing to broadcast most of the tower traffic, but was cut-off due by tower officials because of "serious events" taking place. We were all able to read about it later, but this is the stuff that makes space real--the danger and the trouble it takes to reach for the stars. Keep the audience connected to what's happening, good or bad.
• Have more than one line for coffee -- there were four windows for food, but only one was selling coffee. (It was the only one selling donuts as well, which is why I cared.)
• Put the VIP pavilion in visual range of the flight line -- we couldn't see any of the VIP activities. Seeing Buzz Aldrin come out and congratulate Mike on his flight would have been worth the trip all by itself. Instead we were completely shut-out. (I still haven't even seen a picture of that, hopefully Scaled will put up some pictures eventually.)
• Get someone who can park cars faster than one every 15 seconds. Seriously, it seemed like four people had to have a discussion about every car that parked. Its not rocket science for goodness sake. People have solved this problem already.
• Sell some toys -- there were a surprising number of kids there, and Scaled had actively encouraged people to bring their kids. Max wanted to go to the merchandising tent afterwards to get a toy rocket ship (and I would probably have spent at least $20 to get him one), but they had nothing. Not even a paper airplane/rocketship kit.