EZ-Rocket (Unusual Aircraft Collection)

The EZ-Rocket is a very unusual variant of a very unusual aircraft called the Long-EZ.

As with many other weird-looking aircraft flying in the United States, the Long-EZ is a product of the creative genius of Burt Rutan, who is also responsible for designing Voyager (the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop), the Beech Starship, and SpaceShipOne and its carrier aircraft WhiteKnight.   There are many other people who design strange planes, but Burt Rutan has been very successful both at making them work and selling them for a profit.

In 2003 Rutan's company announced that they were developing SpaceShipOne in an effort to win the 10 million dollar Ansari X-PRIZE for the first private craft to enter space.   Rutan won the competition in 2004, but they had plenty of competition, with 25 other companies developing their own craft.   One of these companies, called XCOR, did testing of their rocket engine by modifying a Long-EZ to produce the EZ-Rocket.   They removed the piston engine and propeller and replaced it with two rocket engines and a fuel tank under the fuselage.   To fly the EZ-Rocket they recruited Dick Rutan - Burt Rutan's brother!   Unlike the rocket planes developed by the United States Air Forceduring the 1960s, the EZ-Rocket takes off using its rocket engines rather than being dropped from a mother ship.   By flying ten miles from the Mojave airport to the California City airport in 2005, a new distance record was set for ground-launched rocket planes, and this flight also carried the first official US mail ever delivered by a rocket plane!   The EZ-rocket isn't the first ground-launched rocket plane, but earlier ones like the Me-163 Komet always landed at the airfield they took off from, so they didn't set any distance records.