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Virgin Galactic said its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane suffered an "in-flight anomaly" during a powered test flight on Friday that resulted in the loss of the aircraft. #SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming. — Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October

“World-famous aircraft designer and North Idaho resident Burt Rutan looked at climate data and found deception – even fraud – behind the assertions of global-warming alarmists intent on implementing a world-wide climate fix that could bring about economic chaos."

Scaled Unveils Hybrid "Flying Car" Over the weekend, Scaled Composites unveiled to the press Burt Rutan's version of a "roadable aircraft," the last design he completed for the company he founded before he retired earlier this year. The two-seat hybrid-electric BiPod hasn't flown, but it has completed some "test hops" on the runway at Mojave, powered by its driving wheels. The aircraft is designed to have four propellers, two on the wings and two on the horizontal stabilizer, which haven't yet been installed. The wings come off and can be stowed between the pods. The left pod has driving controls...

Peep this new roadable aircraft, the last creation of legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan. Scaled Composites unveiled their new flying car to Aviation Week this week. The Model 367 BiPod is a dual-fuselage, hybrid electric car-plane, which engineers at Scaled took from a preliminary design to first flight in just four months. It made its maiden trip March 30, just before Rutan’s official retirement. The company says it has made several short jaunts off the runway at Mojave, Calif., building up enough speed with the drive train to take off without propellers, which have not been installed yet. The roadable...

Commercial space pioneer Burt Rutan has sharply criticized Obama administration proposals to outsource key portions of NASA's manned space program to private firms. The White House wants NASA to use outside firms to develop and operate new rockets and spacecraft that would transport astronauts into orbit and beyond, functions that had previously been considered a core function of the agency. Mr. Rutan, a veteran aerospace designer and entrepreneur, in a letter addressed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, says he is "fearful that the commercial guys will fail" to deliver on the promises to get beyond low earth orbit, and that...

Rutan's Oshkosh Presentation Observes "CO2 Is Not A Pollutant" Aviation pioneer and long-time flight test engineer Burt Rutan has begun making a public case against Anthropological Global Warming, or AGW, saying the data does not support a case for global warming, or climate change of any kind, caused by human activity. In the presentation Rutan made twice at Oshkosh, he says man can measure the past, but cannot create a reliable computer model that will predict global temperatures in the future, and that warm periods are brief, not the natural state of the planet. If anything, he says "Warm periods...

Burt Rutan - aviation pioneer, engineer, test pilot, climate skeptic. Note the car. Recently after some conversations with a former chemical engineer who provided me with some insight, I’ve come to the conclusion that many engineers have difficulty with many of the premises of AGW theory because in their “this has to work or people die” world of exacting standards, the AGW argument doesn’t hold up well by their standards of performance. Today I was surprised to learn that one of the foremost and world famous engineers on the planet, Burt Rutan, has become an active climate skeptic. You...

At the 50th anniversary space conference here Thursday, a fight over the future role of NASA's space program inadvertently took off. If it were up to Burt Rutan, the aerospace engineer known for building a suborbital rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize, NASA wouldn't be developing a spacecraft to put another man on the moon by 2020. That government mission has already been accomplished, and a repeat performance is "silly," Rutan said during a panel held at California Institute of Technology, CalTech, which runs NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "Taxpayer-funded NASA should only fund research and not development," Rutan...

Record-setting aviators Dick Rutan and Steve Fossett are forever linked in the record books as holders of historic nonstop around-the-world flights. Last week, Rutan joined in the exhaustive - but so far unsuccessful - search for his one-time competitor. Fossett went missing Sept. 3, when he took off in a single-engine airplane from a private airstrip at the Flying M Ranch, about 80 miles southeast of Reno. The massive search effort ... entered a second week Monday without finding any sign of the experienced pilot and survivalist. Rutan spent 3½ days flying search missions over the rugged Nevada terrain, returning...

After a 3½ hour drive from La Quinta, talking to his employees by iPhone and checking Internet news reports, aircraft designer Burt Rutan faced reporters and cameras less than a mile from where a test site explosion killed two of his workers and critically injured four more. "We were doing a test we believed was completely safe," Rutan said, visibly emotional. "We don't know why it exploded." Rutan told the reporters he hadn't yet had a chance to inspect the explosion site and was heading to Bakersfield to be with the four injured workers and their families at Kern Medical...

LOS ANGELES: Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to buy the company that built the first private manned rocket to reach space, it was announced Friday. Northrop earlier this month agreed to increase its stake in Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites LLC from 40 percent to 100 percent, said company spokesman Dan McClain. Northrop, a major defense contractor, would not disclose the value of the deal, which still needs regulatory approval. "We went from a partial owner to the owner of the company," McClain said. Northrop and Scaled said the new ownership would not affect Scaled's operations. Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan...

Burt Rutan, the iconoclastic aerospace designer behind Virgin Galactic's fleet of suborbital spaceships, is fond of saying that NASA (or "Naysay," as he jokingly pronounces it) stands for "No Adult Supervision Apparent." His California-based company, Scaled Composites, and the Virgin Galactic team have been cast as nimble mammals, running rings around the dinosaurs of the traditional space establishment. Was there ever an instance of mammals and dinosaurs helping each other out? Well, in the space business there is: Today NASA announced an agreement with Virgin Galactic to collaborate on items ranging from spacesuits to spaceships. NASA's news release said a...

"Could everyone in this room who has been to the moon please reach up a hand." One hand was raised in the packed ballroom at LA's Sheraton Airport hotel. "Now everyone who have been to space please raise your hands." About five hands flew up. "And now, everyone who wants to go to space, please stand up." 200 folks jumped to their feet.

LOS ANGELES, California - A vibrant suborbital space travel industry, including space hotels, and treks to the Moon and beyond are attainable, but only if governmental regulations don't stifle creativity and breakthroughs in building affordable and safe public spaceliners. Those are a few of the views Burt Rutan, head of the Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites--and leader of the team that designed, built and flew the milestone making SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed suborbital rocket plane--shared today with attendees of the the 25th International Space Development Conference. The event runs here May 4-7. Rutan also took the time to fault NASA's...

LOS ANGELES - Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan on Thursday criticized NASA's decision to use an Apollo-style capsule to return to the moon, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to build a new generation of space vehicles using old technology. The designer of SpaceShipOne said NASA's proposed crew exploration vehicle to replace the aging space shuttle fleet doesn't push the technical envelope needed to accomplish more complex future missions that might include manned flights to other planets and moons. "I don't know what they're doing," said Rutan, referring to NASA. "It doesn't make any sense." Rutan said there needs to...

California lawmakers took steps this week to provide an outlay of funds for the inland Mojave Spaceport, an action also designed to keep the state aggressive in public space travel and space enterprise. The California Legislature has moved a bill to invest $11 million in the Mojave Spaceport. Noting competition from other states and nations, the Senate Committee on Transportation voted on a bipartisan 8-1 vote in favor of Senate Bill 1671 by State Senator Roy Ashburn that will ensure a competitive advantage for the first, and only, inland spaceport in the United States. The measure would establish a loan...

According to the tracking page at the Global Flyer webpage (link above), Steve Fossett has made it across the Atlantic, and is currently over southwestern Ireland. He will be landing at Kent International Airport in England in 2-3 hours.

Virgin Galactic is a company established by Richard Branson's Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of developing space tourism for everybody. Virgin Galactic will own and operate privately built spaceships, modelled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft. These spaceships will allow affordable sub-orbital space tourism for the first time in our history. Due to the unique technology developed by Burt Rutan, this space craft design has overcome the difficult issues of re-entry into the earth's atmosphere faced by so many designers trying to create efficient, re-usable space vehicles. We believe that it is in mankind's interest to develop our knowledge and...

MOJAVE, California – XCOR's EZ-Rocket flew into the history books today. The craft made a record-setting point-to-point flight, departing here from the Mojave California Spaceport, gliding to a touchdown at a neighboring airport in California City. The rocket plane was piloted by Dick Rutan, no stranger to milestone-making voyages. In 1986, Rutan was co-pilot on the Voyager airplane that made the first nonstop, around-the-world flight without refueling. The EZ-Rocket is a modified Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft. The vehicle is propelled by twin 400-pound thrust, regeneratively cooled rocket engines and fueled by isopropyl alcohol and liquid oxygen. The EZ-Rocket is able to...

DENVER, Colo. -- Stand by for dramatic and radical change in the emerging passenger space travel industry—but don’t count on NASA or major aerospace service providers to propel the public into space anytime soon. Since the early 1970s, NASA seems to mean No Adult Supervision Apparent. The unaffordable space shuttle, for example, is a failure in trying to reduce cost for accessing Earth orbit. Moreover, companies out to build the space agency’s replacement for the shuttle — the Crew Exploration Vehicle — are doing so under an arrangement that cripples innovation, creativity, and the chance for breakthroughs. Thus says Burt...