Mojave Airport
Your article, “Flight to Nowhere” (Sept. 29), incorrectly reports that the Mojave Airport “is mostly an aircraft boneyard.”
While scrapping and storing old aircraft play a small role in the airport’s activity, the major business at this unique and internationally recognized facility is designing, testing and manufacturing aircraft. Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites is one of the world’s most prolific aircraft design firms and the creator of Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world unrefueled. Mojave Airport probably hosts more “first flights” than any other airport.
The airport is also home to the nation’s only privately operated test pilot school, a General Electric jet engine flight test facility and Derringer Aircraft, which is manufacturing a light twin business aircraft. In another hangar, vintage aircraft are restored for eventual display at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica.
Most exciting, perhaps, is the facility Rotary Rocket is constructing to erect Roton, a unique, new reusable rocket design that will be launched from the airport in the near future.
Mojave Airport is considerably more than an “aircraft boneyard.”
WILLIAM H. DEAVER
President, Mojave Town Council
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