Development and History
The first flight took place on July 21, 2001, flown by test pilot Dick Rutan.
On a typical flight, the EZ-Rocket takes off on rockets, gains altitude for a minute or so, then switches off the rockets and glides to a deadstick landing.
The vehicle actually flies better during deadstick glide landings than a Long-EZ due to lack of drag from a stationary pusher propeller — the vehicle's aerodynamics are cleaner in spite of its belly tank. It is also lighter due to the lack of a piston engine (the rocket propulsion system is significantly lighter), so enjoys significantly lower wing loading than a stock Long-EZ.
XCOR registered it as a conventional aircraft, rather than a suborbital, because the vehicle does not reach the 100 km Kármán line altitude.
Read more about this topic: XCOR EZ-Rocket
Famous quotes containing the words development and, development and/or history:
“Theories of child development and guidelines for parents are not cast in stone. They are constantly changing and adapting to new information and new pressures. There is no “right” way, just as there are no magic incantations that will always painlessly resolve a child’s problems.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)