Burt Rutan

With a sonic boom that resounded above the Mojave Desert, a rocket plane belonging to British billionaire Richard Branson's commercial space venture Virgin Galactic got one step closer to carrying tourists into space. On Monday the company's SpaceShipTwo ignited its rocket motor in mid-flight for the first time and sped to Mach 1.2, faster than sound, reaching about 56,000 feet in altitude. The test flight is the biggest milestone in Virgin Galactic's 81/2-year endeavor to be the world's first commercial space liner, which would make several trips a day carrying scores of paying customers into space for a brief journey.

With a sonic boom that resounded above the Mojave Desert, a rocket plane belonging to British billionaire Richard Branson's commercial space venture Virgin Galactic got one step closer to carrying tourists into space. On Monday the company's SpaceShipTwo ignited its rocket motor in mid-flight for the first time and sped to Mach 1.2, faster than sound, reaching about 56,000 feet in altitude. The test flight is the biggest milestone in Virgin Galactic's 81/2-year endeavor to be the world's first commercial space liner, which would make several trips a day carrying scores of paying customers into space for a brief journey.

Fame in the aerospace industry has been typically reserved for the people who pilot flying machines — Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager, Neil Armstrong. Not so much for the people who design the technology. Maverick aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan may be an exception. Five of his planes now hang in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, including the Voyager, which in 1986 became the first airplane to fly around the world without refueling, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private rocket plane ever to put a man into space.

Fame in the aerospace industry has been typically reserved for the people who pilot flying machines — Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager, Neil Armstrong. Not so much for the people who design the technology. Maverick aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan may be an exception. Five of his planes now hang in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, including the Voyager, which in 1986 became the first airplane to fly around the world without refueling, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private rocket plane ever to put a man into space.

Space entrepreneurs Burt Rutan and Richard Branson announced plans Thursday to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and equipment. Called Spaceship Co., the enterprise will be jointly owned by Britain-based Virgin Group Ltd.

Pioneering aircraft designer Burt Rutan, whose Space- ShipOne manned rocket became the first privately funded vehicle to reach space last month, said Tuesday that he would try to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize this fall. The prize, funded by private donors and created to spur commercial spaceflight, is being offered to the first vehicle to fly three people into space, return them safely to Earth and then repeat the exercise within two weeks.

Acclaimed aircraft designer Burt Rutan said Wednesday that he is sick of "the lousy schools, crime, drugs, graffiti and proliferation of lawyers" in California and has decided to move his small Mojave firm, Scaled Composites Inc., to another state.

Mojave is a truck-stop kind of town, more weigh station than destination, a wind-swept stretch of commercial sprawl where the main drag is a state highway and the main attraction is the desert beyond. In a window booth of a Denny's, Mojave's most celebrated resident sobs quietly over a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy. "I'm sorry," Burt Rutan croaks. "But when I got on the radio and told Dick to turn off the strobe light, and we saw the light go off. . . ."

Jeana Yeager and Dick and Burt Rutan certainly deserve their Presidential Citizens Medals and applause for their considerable accomplishment with the Voyager flight. The feat was, however, dimmed by the Rutan brothers' kowtowing to the Reagan Administration for creating an environment "devoid of government regulations . . . " Burt Rutan stated, "I only filled out two pieces of paper for the U.S. government." These quotes appeared in a Times front page story (Dec. 30) with a four-column photo bordered by a story of settlements to the survivors of four Challenger victims.

Aviation engineer Burt Rutan, who made a nonstop flight around the world in 1986, won the first government license to make a suborbital manned rocket flight and qualify for a $10-million prize. Rutan's Scaled Composites plans to drop a ship from an aircraft at an altitude of 50,000 feet, about 10 miles, and fire a rocket motor to propel the craft as high as 62 miles, according to the company's website.

A production facility that would build the world's first fleet of commercial spaceships is set to begin construction Tuesday at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The 68,000-square-foot facility, one of the first aircraft assembly plants to be built in the region in decades, will be home to the Spaceship Co., or TSC ? a joint venture owned by Mojave-based Scaled Composites and British billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic. TSC hopes to complete the complex by September.

Commercial space tourism got a boost when Virgin Galactic's rocket plane successfully completed its first manned test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The aircraft, dubbed SpaceShipTwo, was dropped from a carrier plane at 45,000 feet and glided without power for more than 10 minutes before landing on the desert runway Sunday. The carrier plane, which resembles a flying catamaran because of its two fuselages, and the six-passenger rocket ship are in the midst of a test-flight program that will continue until Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company that owns the planes, believes it can begin commercial operations.

Within the next decade, the stereotypical space traveler may no longer be a square-jawed fighter pilot but a wealthy Internet geek with deep pockets. Or at least that's what a crop of gutsy space entrepreneurs hope. For half a century, venturing into space has been the primary domain of governments that can afford to spend billions of dollars to develop and send massive rockets into orbit. But modern-day industrialists believe a privately funded commercial space industry is poised to blast off. With technological advances that they say will make rocketry more affordable, companies are popping up nationwide and focusing on an array of ventures, from lifting "space tourists" briefly into orbit to launching satellites and cargo far into space.

Scaled Composites, the fledgling space tourism company founded by rocket pioneer Burt Rutan, was fined $25,870 on Friday as a result of an accident last July that killed three workers at the firm's Mojave, Calif., testing facility. The fine covered five violations of workplace safety codes, including a failure to maintain a safe working environment and to properly train workers handling hazardous materials, according to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

Space entrepreneurs Burt Rutan and Richard Branson announced plans Thursday to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and equipment. Called Spaceship Co., the enterprise will be jointly owned by Britain-based Virgin Group Ltd.

The designers of the first privately funded manned rocket to burst into space were handed a $10-million check Saturday, a prize designed to encourage technology that would open the heavens to tourists. SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan accepted the Ansari X Prize money, along with a 150-pound trophy, as a chase plane flew over the ceremony in a field adjacent to the St. Louis Science Center.

Voyager, the first aircraft to fly nonstop around the world without refueling, could have gone on as far as Seattle instead of landing at Edwards Air Force Base, the plane's designer, Burt Rutan, told the Legislature. "We expected to get Voyager home with 7% of its fuel in the tank after a 25,000-mile flight," Rutan said. "But we lost fuel because of the takeoff accident, and we lost some more because of a leaky gas tank cap. At the end, they had 18 gallons, about 1.5% of the fuel supply.

The Burt Rutan piece ("The Man From Wild Blue Yonder," by Preston Lerner, Nov. 21) was stunning. As a longtime aviation writer and editor and a pilot, I nit-pick for the errors I know I will find in an aviation story in a mass-circulation newspaper. Your score: 100% accurate. Lerner either has an extensive aviation background or he is one of the best and most accurate reporters I've read. Perhaps both. And he is a very engaging writer. He took some really complex aviation stuff and explained it. I know Rutan and have interviewed him. Lerner captured the essence of an innovator.

Pioneering aircraft designer Burt Rutan, whose Space- ShipOne manned rocket became the first privately funded vehicle to reach space last month, said Tuesday that he would try to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize this fall. The prize, funded by private donors and created to spur commercial spaceflight, is being offered to the first vehicle to fly three people into space, return them safely to Earth and then repeat the exercise within two weeks.