Burt Rutan
Burt Rutan
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutanis an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two-week period. With his VariEze design, Rutan is responsible for popularizing the canard configuration...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEngineer
Date of Birth17 June 1943
CityEstacada, OR
CountryUnited States of America
We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration.
We didn't know the importance of home computers before the Internet. We had them mostly for fun, then the Internet came along and was enabled by all the PCs out there.
I spent about seven years during the Vietnam War flight-testing airplanes for the Air Force. And then I went in and I had a lot of fun building airplanes that people could build in their garages. And some 3,000 of those are flying. Of course, one of them is around-the-world Voyager.
Our hope is that this will be a benchmark ... for a lot more people to not only have fun but to reap the benefits that we believe might be there,
I really thought he'd start this program, do the conceptual work, and move on. But he's like a kid in a candy store. He's having more fun than he ever has.
A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.
The ship that we're developing in our shop right now in Mojave will have a very large cabin.
Breakthroughs are what define our species. They come about because we are threatened.
Dick made the point in 1986 that it would be good for someone to come out and beat the record, and he's delighted to give it up.
We have a lot of openings for people...not just engineers, but people that can help us build research spaceships and production spaceships.
I strongly feel that, if we are successful, our program will mark the beginning of a renaissance for manned space flight. This might even be similar to that wonderful time period between 1908 and 1912 when the world went from a total of ten airplane pilots to hundreds of airplane types and thousands of pilots in 39 countries.
Mankind does need to move away from where we are to explore somewhere else.
We can show that we can move right into an industry to fly the public at the level of safety that the early airliners had,
We then develop an expert prototype-manufacturing workforce for our research projects, and later provide production opportunities for them as our spaceships enter the production line.