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In the US, the regulations on "experimental" aircraft are quite lenient. The main limitation is that you can't operate an experimental aircraft in a densely populated area or major airway without special permission. Permission is usually granted after successful flight tests.

The main place for testing unusual civilian aircraft and rockets in the US is Mojave Air and Space Port. They're authorized as both a launch site and an airport. SpaceShip One, the Voyager, and the EZ-Rocket first flew there. There's plenty of room over the desert in case things go wrong.

"You want to test a rocket engine? This is a place where you can do that." - Mojave Air and Space Port Board of Directors

The Mojave Airport is a really cool place... you drive by it and there's nothing but random planes, everything from jetliners to fighter jets. They're mostly an aircraft storage yard. Picture of their storage yard Link to their main site

The Mojave Airport is a really cool place... you drive by it and there's nothing but random planes, everything from jetliners to fighter jets. They're mostly an aircraft storage yard. Picture of their storage yard Link to their main site

Mojave Airport is the nearest place with a commercial spaceport licence.

Sound levels are indeed very important, not only for employee occupational hazard levels but for sound levels reaching out in to the town of Mojave and the rest of the airport. We like to be good neighbors. We also had to provide estimated sound levels as part of the Mojave Civilian Flight test Center's application to become the nation's first inland space port.

Fortunately, we're within restricted airspace near Edwards Air Force Base where you are allowed to go supersonic and make sonic booms, one of the few places in America where you can do this. The people who live here are used to the occasional BANG! BANG! in the morning as the boys and girls in the fighter jets paint circles into the skies overhead. The rocket taking off is nowhere near the level or type of sound generated by the sonic booms (good booms make your wall art crooked) and our own booms are minimalized on the ground by the fact that the aircraft is at a 70 degree climb angle.

We've been able to come up with a pretty accurate graph of noise falloff. Once we begin testing the next generation of engines on the next generation of flying vehicle we'll have an even better idea of what to expect for the full suborbital flight profile.

--Mike M., XCOR

-Mike

Out in California, there are mammoth junk yards of nothing but a century of airplanes gone to waste

Uhm, actually I went searching for these and could only find one in California: Mojave. True, it's gotten a bit busy after 9-11 but they don't have _that_ many planes. The largest one is in Arizona.

However, $300,000 is a bit steep

The auction says: This is the first of its kind and has been drastically reduced from the normal sales price of $295,000.

Instead of selling them to the eccentric, the planes out in the junk yards of California should be given away converted into homeless shelters and low-income housing using the company's swivel technology.

Yeah, I'm sure the owners of those planes would love that idea. FYI: these aircraft still contain parts that can be used, which is the sole purpose of keeping them around. A majority of aircraft however is just mothballed until better times come around. There are times it's not economical to operate them but that doesn't make them worthless. Even if they'd give away the fuselage, who would pay for (a)removing all sellable parts (b)transportation (c)the swivel system (d)the interior??

In other words, plenty of Karma Whoring but nothing substantial to say.