Mojave Air and Space Port was where the EZ-Rocket – a tiny build-it-yourself plane outfitted with rockets – first flew. Its two rocket engines, designed, built and tested by XCOR Aerospace, run on isopropyl alcohol, basically rubbing alcohol, and liquid oxygen, generating a total of 800 pounds of thrust. The EZ-Rocket is an operations demonstrator, designed to show that a rocket powered vehicle could reliably and economically be flown several times a day.
July 21, 2001, is the date of its first flight. At that time it had only one engine. On October 3rd, 2001 the EZ-Rocket flew on two engines, reaching about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) altitude above Mojave Airport before exhausting its propellants. Then test pilot Dick Rutan, who was the first to fly around the world nonstop in the Voyager, glided it back home. Later, on December 3rd, 2005, Dick Rutan flew the EZ-Rocket for a world distance record.
EZ-Rocket flew 26 times, four of those flight before air show crowds: July, 2002, at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and at the X-Prize Cup in October, 2005, in Las Cruces, NM. The EZ-Rocket is now retired