With travel to space its goal, company tests craft at Stead

Edward Wright can see the day not far into the future when his X-Rocket LLC routinely runs commercial missions into space.

But for the moment, the company's closest approaches to space come every few weeks at Reno Stead Airport when pilot Bob Ray takes a supersonic jet trainer into the air.

The craft, dubbed Maching Bird 1, once was flown by the Czech Air Force, and it's among the highest performance aircraft in the United States.

The MiG-21 can travel twice the speed of sound and reach altitudes of more than 75,000 feet.

Even though X-Rocket is based at Bothell, Wash., and even though its spacecraft development efforts are conducted in the Mohave Desert of California, it chose Stead for its flight operations for a couple of prosaic reasons: Most important, says Wright,Aviation Classics Ltd.

and its staff skilled at maintenance of MiG aircraft are based at the airport.

"And we don't have a lot of neighbors to complain about noise," adds Wright, the president of X-Rocket LLC.

There hasn't been a lot of noise to complain about until recently.

X-Rocket, which had been flying the plane about once a month, took it into the skies eight times during March.

One of those flights late in the month sent Pam Leetsma, a teacher from Bellflower, Calif., into supersonic flight as X-Rocket sought to generate publicity for its "Teacher in Space" program.

The company's plan to bring space travel within the reach of teachers or anyone else, for that matter works like this: It gains experience from its flights of Maching Bird I to build a two-seat suborbital trainer.

Because MiG-21 jet fighters and trainers are widely available,Wright figures to use the MiG as the basic airframe of his next craft.

Ultimately, X-Rocket wants to fly a fleet of lowcost suborbital spacecraft.

And as X-Rocket develops that craft, it also will begin work on an FAA-licensed spaceport somewhere in the United States.

A location hasn't been selected, but Reno isn't necessarily among the top contenders even though the company knows a lot about the skies over northern Nevada.

"Reno is a location we might consider, but it's not on our 'A' list yet,"Wright says.

One drawback: Unlike some cities in the West, Reno hasn't yet designated a spaceport commission.

(Krys Bart, executive director of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, says a spaceport commission isn't a current priority.) In the meantime, X-Rocket provides a little pop to the regional economy every time its MiG-21 rolls down the runway.

"It burns 700 gallons an hour at $3 a gallon," Wright says."You can do the math."