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
Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures...it can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees.
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.
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,
We have a lot of openings for people...not just engineers, but people that can help us build research spaceships and production spaceships.
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,
Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace. We have redefined space travel as we know it.
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.
Breakthroughs are what define our species. They come about because we are threatened.
At first, it will be real rich people, hundreds of them flying into suborbital space, ... But what will happen is you'll run out of real rich people real quickly.
There will be a new industry. And we are just now in a beginning. I will predict that in 12 or 15 years, there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people that fly, and see that black sky.
The ship that we're developing in our shop right now in Mojave will have a very large cabin.
As opposed to the first 44 years of manned spaceflight, ... the difference is people are going to know that it is for them.
You're going to be more creative, more innovative, and have a lot more ability to stumble into a big breakthrough.