Posted on 11/20/2004 4:48:39 PM PST by anymouse
A maverick aviator with Elvis-like sideburns, Burt Rutan spread his futuristic vision Friday of space travel no longer dominated by the government but by daring engineers like himself.
Seeking to inspire students, faculty and visitors at the University of California at Los Angeles, Rutan offered a new vision for 21st Century commercial travel--including "spacelines" instead of airlines and resort hotels in orbit--taking average citizens where only handfuls of astronauts have tread thus far.
Dressed in blue jeans and a matching shirt, Rutan called for a new era in aviation, saying risk-taking adventurers like the Wright brothers are needed again to make space tourism a reality in the next few years.
"We haven't had a proper, aggressive space program in this country since 1970," said Rutan, weeks after he and his team made history by flying the first private craft to outer space and back.
Trying to devise spacecraft for tourism will mean trial and error, including crashes of test vehicles, Rutan acknowledged.
"Yeah, there will be smoking holes, but the airplane was made through natural selection," he told about 250 people. "That needs to happen in order to discover the breakthroughs that are out there."
For skeptics who wonder how Rutan's SpaceShipOne entering lower orbits last month translates into lucrative tourism, he noted that the world's earliest aircraft builders never imagined commercial airlines either.
But for that vision to materialize, a new generation of "superheroes" will be needed from today's students and children, to be inspired the way Howard Hughes and Charles Lindbergh were as children during aviation's infancy in the early 1900s, Rutan said.
The payoff would be a breathtaking view of planet Earth, he said, showing slides and videos of how his prototype reached the black void of space this year.
With funding from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Rutan and his Scaled Composites firm developed the spaceship and a launching aircraft that secured the Ansari X Prize in October. It was a $10 million reward for flying the first private manned spacecraft to an altitude exceeding 328,000 feet twice within a 14-day period.
At his company's headquarters in the Mojave Desert, cultural diversions are few and Rutan holds an eccentric reputation as a boss.
When he fills jobs, he said, he doesn't look at classroom grades, but rather for fire in the eyes of his hires. He expects his designers to hold their own on the workshop floor, where designs become real. He wants employees who don't mind "sweating like hell." And he even told one recruit to quit college early because "all he was doing was this liberal [education] sludge."
"I prefer your mind not being poisoned with all this garbage," he said Friday, causing a few to laugh. But a university representative later jokingly reminded students to finish their liberal arts coursework.
"I encourage my people to fail because if they're not failing, they're not going to have a breakthrough," Rutan said.
Perhaps the most provocative slide in his presentation was a chart forecasting the first commercial space travel in three to four years. About 3,000 tourists would become "astronauts" in five years, and within 15 years, suborbital flights would become so affordable that 50,000 passengers will have entered space.
And yes, resort hotels in orbit high above Earth would open in 15 years and become affordable for thousands of guests 25 years from now, Rutan said.
By 2050, spacelines would become so common that passengers "will be bored looking out of a suborbital spaceflight as we do on an airliner," he said.
British businessman Richard Branson has signed a deal with Rutan to begin a spaceline called Virgin Galactic, which would charge $230,000 a person to take a three-hour flight and experience three to four minutes of weightlessness, with a view of the world's curvature.
Even though he said he has "a couple" of contracts with NASA for work unrelated to the space program, Rutan used the U.S. agency again as his whipping boy for what he described as stagnation in space innovation in the past three decades.
Rutan said that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration essentially holds an inefficient monopoly over space travel and is stifling scientific enterprise that could make space travel less costly. The private sector, he contended, will soon provide the technology and aircraft for the sort of spaceflights that had made NASA the standard-bearer in the 1960s.
"There has only been risk-averse, don't-try-that" attitudes, Rutan said. "I'm not sure NASA is going to be a relevant player in suborbital space access."
After his speech, many students told Rutan that they were inspired.
Michael Remington, 29, an aerospace senior who had earlier spent four years in the Navy, said he wanted to make spaceline travel a business career.
"This is the guy I want to emulate because that's what I want to do," Remington said afterward. "It's just exciting."
"I prefer your mind not being poisoned with all this garbage," he said Friday, causing a few to laugh.
Space ping
Aviation ping.
God bless'em!
Within 5 years of the Lindbergh flight to Paris the DC-1, DC-3 and the Boeing Flying Boats were plying the air routes blazed by Lindbergh. He charted London to Sydney for BOAC, Minneaplis to Tokyo for Northwest Airlines and Dallas to Mexico city for Braniff!
Burt is the "Right Stuff"!
It's a lot bigger job getting to orbit. I wonder if any of the ideas Burt used in winning the X-prize will be useful in attaining and returning from orbit. Aside from the piggyback ride to launch I mean.
Oops that the Shadow!!!
If he gathers mavericks, in his mold, then "The Sky's not the Limit"!
This has been the dream of us SciFi nuts for years. The private sector is the key.
You know there's a guy here in the Clear Lake Area, former NASA rocket scientist who is working on his own X-Prize entry...He is one of the original participants...
Its the "Advent" program...
His system will be a single-stage to orbit launched vertically from the water...
Should be fun...
Hey Stevie, how's it going?
I got to know the Advent guys (Harry and Jim) some years ago. They made a good go of it, but they never got the funding to go forward. As opposed to other such schemes, they did refund all of their customers money. As far as I know they have no plans to resurrect their launcher plans.
"But a university representative later jokingly reminded students to finish their liberal arts coursework."
Can't have thinking minds running loose can we!
I like Rutan and his accomplishments but the stuff he's predicting is frankly a pipe dream. That is unless there's a major breakthrough in propulsion technology. Affordable space travel is like commercial nuclear fusion, always 30 years away.
Well, it isn't impossible.
in 1900, cars were still called "horseless carraiges"
in 1940, air power was a decisive factor in the opening rounds of WW2.
What can WE do in 30-40 years?
I think its pretty exciting. But something in the back of my mind says, " Preston Tucker ", with NASA in the role of the big 3 auto companies.
Did Tucker made a better car and the Big 3 got scared of Tucker???
Don't underestimate the American Spirit..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.