LOCAL 2004: RUTAN LAUNCHES A NEW SPACE AGE MOJAVE AIRCRAFT DESIGNER CRAFTS PRIVATE SPACESHIP.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

MOJAVE - In the clear skies over the Southern California desert, a red, white and blue rocket plane accomplished something no privately produced spacecraft had ever done: It went into space.

Then it did it again - and again.

Built by a maverick aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financed with $20 million-plus from billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the stubby SpaceShipOne may have started a new era of space travel - by ordinary people.

``We're starting a new Space Age,'' said former space shuttle astronaut Rick Searfoss, who watched as the rocket plane flew into space Oct. 4 from Mojave Airport, winning a $10 million prize as the first privately built reusable spacecraft.

``We're taking the blinders off and seeing the possibilities.''

Lots of people seem to be seeing them.

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Atlantic airline and host of the Fox reality show ``The Rebel Billionaire'' - hired Rutan to build a passenger-carrying space plane to fly paying customers under the Virgin Galactic logo - $190,000 for four minutes of weightlessness.

Beverage-maker 7UP announced that it will host a contest in 2005 to award a free ticket into space on one of Branson's first Virgin Galactic spaceflights.

And the U.S. government is already making rules for passenger-carrying spaceships.

Seven weeks after SpaceShipOne's prizewinning flight, Congress passed legislation that makes it easier for experimental spacecraft builders to get permission to launch them, extends limits on lawsuits - and orders space companies to warn passengers that the federal government has not certified the spacecraft's safety.

``These early suborbital vehicles aren't going to be like flying Delta. Let's be clear about that,'' said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society. ``These are test vehicles. We need to have regulations that recognize that.''

Like his spindly Voyager, which circled the globe in 1986 on one tank of gas, and the VariEze and Long-EZ planes that revolutionized kit-built aircraft, Rutan's spacecraft - named Time magazine's ``Invention of the Year'' - is like nothing else.

SpaceShipOne is carried aloft by another Rutan-designed aircraft, a twin-engine jet called the White Knight, then ignites its motor to zoom into space.

It glides back to a runway landing, like the space shuttles or NASA's X-15 rocket planes of the 1960s.

But while the shuttles are sheathed in high-tech materials to guard them from the heat of re-entry, SpaceShipOne uses a typically unconventional Rutan alternative.

To slow the craft for re-entry into the atmosphere, twin tail booms pivot upward, acting as a giant speed brake so the craft descends like a badminton shuttlecock.

The rocket motor is also unconventional: It uses nitrous oxide - laughing gas - and rubber.

An illustration of his accomplishment in space travel is that of the five 2004 flights to carry people into space, three were made by SpaceShipOne. The others were by Russian capsules carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) SpaceShipOne pilot Michael Melvill celebrates after one of the craft's successful, and prize-winning, flights.

Dexter/Southfield Schools

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News