book Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization|Entering Space. On 3 December 2005, XCOR Aerospace flew its EZ-Rocket (a rocket-powered Long-EZ aircraft the company built as a demonstrator for its reusable rocket engines) from Mojave, California to California City, California, both in Kern County. Test pilot Dick Rutan made the flight, which lasted about 9 minutes and carried US mail from the post office in Mojave to addresses in California City. This was the first time that a crewed, rocket-powered aircraft was used to carry U.S. Mail. Occurrences in popular culture A surplus mail rocket is used to reach the moon in Rocket Ship Galileo (1947). Mail is delivered by rocket in an early chapter of Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973). The character Prentice Pirate receives orders this way. RocketMail was the name for one of the first major, free webmail services. For a brief time, RocketMail battled with Hotmail for the number-one spot among free webmail services. Yahoo! acquired RocketMail in 1997, and assimilated it into Yahoo! Mail. Ethan Hunt's computerized sunglasses (for a mission briefing) are delivered by a missile with a ground-piercing spike on the nose, fired from a shoulder-mounted tube, at the start of the 2000 film Mission: Impossible 2. Gerhard Zucker's Scottish rocket mail was depicted in the 2004 film The Rocket Post. Bill Bryson mentions missile mail in his 2006 memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. See also Astrophilately References Further reading Rocket Mail Catalogue, 1943, Imperial Stamp Co Ltd, Allahabad Ellington, Jesse T. and Perry F. Zwisler, Rocket Mail Catalog 1904-1967 (1967) Field, Francis J, Rocket and Jet Posts, 1965, 40pp Kronstein, Max. Rocket Mail flights of the World, 1986. External links Video of Lake Greenwood Mail Rocket Airmail Postal history Postal vehicles Mail