Burt Rutan: Building 'Tomorrowland' One Launch at a Time

space.com ^ | 10/14/04 | Leonard David

[KevinDavis]

MOJAVE, California -- Nobody can claim that Burt Rutan, the innovative aerospace designer, doesn’t have his head in the clouds…and his eyes focused on the stars.

Fresh from success of nudging the piloted SpaceShipOne’s nose to record-setting heights and capturing the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have clearly set their sights on far loftier goals.

[KevinDavis]

Burt has something up his sleeve...

[KevinDavis]

[ElkGroveDan]

This is the best part of the article:

“Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It’s more expensive…not less…a horrible mistake,” Rutan said. “They knew it right away. And they’ve spent billions…arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake…trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is…it’s the government trying to do it.”

Burt is clearly one of us. His brother Dick ran for Congress in the Inland Empire as the Republican nominee, but it was a long shot race.

All in all a fine couple of people. I used to drive up to the Mojave airport from the Valley when they were building Voyager. In those days you could just stroll in and chat with them. Go Burt!

[Vroomfondel]

I figure in 50 years they'll be building suborbital craft on Junkyard Wars.

[Brett66]

Burt is clearly one of us

I was reading an article in The New Yorker magazine on Burt and he was joking about how it would be easier if the pilot of spaceshipone were someone other than Mike Melvill. He jokingly said something to the effect that if it were a liberal and something happened on the flight he wouldn't care.

Burt's now my hero.....

[musical_airman]

You know, It's funny, While I was on tour recently I started reading Ayn Rand's "For the New Intellectual", and thought immediately of Rutan. Go figure.

[KevinDavis]

I think it is safe to say that Burt is supporting GW.

[Moonman62]

It was hard not to notice all the American flags around their launches, and the banner that read, "SpaceShipOne, Government Zero."

[Sivad]

Burt Rutan, John Madden, Ozzie Smith, and me.

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo alumnus all.

(Oh, I forgot Scott and Lacy Peterson, too.)

[roadcat]

On earlier posts I had disagreements with someone else. I said this is historic like the Wright Brothers. Other guy says no big deal, sub-orbital flight was done over 40 years ago. My point was that it's private, not government doing it, and it opens up space flight to more entrepreneurs. Like this thread is pointing out a comparison to IBM and Apple in the 1970's, the big guys now have to take notice of Rutan and others. The big guys have been going down the wrong path the last 30 years.

I had more or less given up on government getting us to space in a big way. Now I have hope that some progress will be made in the next 25 years.