MOJAVE HOST FACILITY NOW A SPACEPORT TITLE MAKES IT 5TH SUCH SITE.Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer MOJAVE - Almost lost amid the accolades for the historic SpaceShipOne space flight was a milestone achievement for the Mojave Airport - it's official recognition as commercial spaceport space·port n. An installation for sheltering, testing, maintaining, and launching spacecraft. . The Mojave Airport received its spaceport license from the Federal Aviation Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), component of the U.S. Department of Transportation that sets standards for the air-worthiness of all civilian aircraft, inspects and licenses them, and regulates civilian and military air traffic through its air traffic control , making it the fifth such facility to be licensed by the FAA and the nation's first inland spaceport. The license, good for five years, will allow any company with an FAA space launch license and an agreement with Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. to make space flights from the airport. ``The Mojave spaceport The Mojave Spaceport (IATA: MHV, ICAO: KMHV) , also known as the Mojave Airport and Civilian Aerospace Test Center, is located in Mojave, California, at an elevation of 2,791 feet. is open for business,'' said Stuart Witt, the airport's general manager. The license was presented to Witt on Monday by Patricia Grace Smith, associate administrator for the FAA's commercial space transportation office, just after Scaled Composites company's SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded and developed manned craft to fly to space. Commercially licensed spaceports already exist at Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 3,456 acres (1,399 hectares), SW Calif., near Lompoc; chief Pacific coast launch site for military satellites. on the California coast, in Florida adjoining Kennedy Space Center Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral) U.S. launch site for manned space missions. [U.S. Hist.: WB, So:562] See : Astronautics , in Virginia and in Alaska. The license covers two types of horizontal launches: ones like that Monday by the SpaceShipOne team, in which a spacecraft is launched from a mothership and then rockets into space, and one for rocket-powered aircraft that would take off from the airport's runway. It doesn't allow vertical launches, like conventional rockets make from Kennedy or Vandenberg. Burt Rutan, the designer of SpaceShipOne and the founder of Mojave-based Scaled Composites, said launching his spacecraft from the Mojave Airport helped keep his costs down compared to having to work with a government facility. ``If you don't do it at a small commercial airport, then you have enormous costs,'' Rutan said. XCOR XCOR Cross-Correlation , another Mojave Airport tenant, is working on a rocket-powered aircraft called Xerus. The spacecraft would take off and land like a regular aircraft but would use a liquid fuel rocket engine to propel it to speeds of more than Mach 4, roughly 3,000 mph. XCOR envisions the vehicle being used for taking small payloads into space and for taking space tourists aloft. The project is in the preliminary design stage. The project is not funded at this time. As a steppingstone step·ping·stone n. 1. A stone that provides a place to step, as in crossing a stream. 2. An advantageous position for advancement toward a goal. , XCOR has been testing an aircraft called the EZ- Rocket, a modified Long-EZ home-built aircraft designed by Rutan, to demonstrate the company can design and routinely operate a rocket-powered vehicle. Scaled Composites is one of two dozen contenders for the Ansari X Prize The Ansari X PRIZE was a space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. , a $10 million bounty offered by a St. Louis-based foundation to the first privately developed spacecraft that carries three people to 62 miles up, then does so again within two weeks. As with Monday's SpaceShipOne flight into space, Rutan plans to conduct the attempts for the Ansari X Prize at Mojave. Jim Skeen, (661) 267-5743 james.skeen(at)dailynews.com |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion