I once pushed to have a statue to Burt Rutan put up near Morse’s in Central Park, and would try again if I could muster enough support. He is an inspiration and a leader, creating opportunity and advancing humanity with his gifts. From the first EZ kit airplanes to SpaceShipOne, he and his team have brought us ever closer to the sky.
As you stroll through the desert airport/spaceport here, you don’t see a “Keep Out! Spaceliner Under Construction” sign. On the other hand, there’s a palpable feeling that behind closed hangar doors, the future of public space travel is, indeed, a work in progress—and in good hands.
At Scaled Composites—home of the privately financed and built SpaceShipOne that made a trio of piloted suborbital flights in 2004 under the rubric of Tier 1—the fabrication of a fleet of passenger-carrying space planes and huge carrier launch planes is underway. This activity is labeled Tier 1b.
Burt Rutan, head of the firm, is chief design maestro leading a spaceliner workforce. While he’s not about to roll out blueprints or show you factory floor hardware, he gave this reporter a squat down, legs folded, but relaxing beanbag chair interview in his office to discuss the business of public space travel.
We need to encourage more people like Rutan and others like Robert Bigelow to move beyond current NASA efforts and truly bring spaceflight to the masses.
I realize I am going to get hammered when I ask this, but………..how has this advanced humanity?
Umm, I have to agree with comment #1.
Anybody that can afford this sort of play has a moral responsibility to feed the hungry, house the homeless, etc.
#1 & #2, When the Portuguese, my ancestors, started exploring the seas, many would ask a very similar question. “What’s the purpose?” Well, what started out as the Portuguese Expansion eventually lead to the entire European continent exploring the seas, the discovery of Central and North America by the Spanish and the discovery of the sea route to Asia and of South America (Brasil) by the Portuguese.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans are for space what the Portuguese were for the seas. What was started out by Nasa may eventually give place to the private sector.
This is not to hammer either of you, but to try to answer at least at an abstract level to your question.
Agreed, Miguel.
Could have said the same thing about Morse, Edison, etc.. The world is big enough to appreciate many endeavors.
I admire Burt Rutan for what he is trying to accomplish, but I can’t get the least bit excited about it. He hasn’t done anything that wasn’t accomplished 40 years ago. At some point, he is going to hit the same brick wall that stopped NASA’s spaceplane.
Forget the single stage to orbit nonsense; the energy curve is too steep to waste fuel lifting unnecessary structure, just so it can return to earth. Instead, concentrate on developing space industry.
NASA’s proposed heavy lift vehicle will take 100 tons into orbit. Rutan should be thinking about what he can do with that payload. What kind of space tug could he develop just for use in space? If he had such a tug, what could he do with it? Could he put a space station in the moon’s orbit? Could his space tug ferry supplies to and from the moon? Could he come up with a reusable rocket for delivering supplies to the moon’s surface from his space station?
I wish commercial enterprises would focus on complementing NASA, instead of competing with it. Use NASA’s heavy lift to get into orbit, then build the space infrastructure needed for exploration and exploitation.
NASA would first need to develop a reliable heavy-lift capability, right?
As for innovation and cynics, I’ll bet the first person to walk over the horizon got naysayers in a twitter, too.
NASA will be putting 100-ton payloads in space before Rutan’s space plane carries a single passenger into orbit.
I think that NASA already has a 100 ton heavy lift capability, in Russia. They just don’t have anything that heavy worth putting into orbit.
If the heavy-lift capability is in Russia, it doesn’t belong to NASA.
It is also interesting that most of the naysayers look at spaceflight as a zero-sum game. Why can’t Rutan succeed? Would it be that terrible? Does everyone have to lose in order for NASA to win?
That also goes for those who feel that starving people won’t be fed because of money squandered on space. How much is Iraq costing us a day, and now much are we gaining from it? Space development will go farther towards solving world problems than sitting around complaining about how much it costs ever could.
Can I make 1 idea??
What do you thinnk will happen IF,
1 ship crashes..??
2. what happens if a ship gets stranded??
I put the complete 1hour 37 minute Burt Ruthan keynote from National Space Society from last year up on Google Video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3777568447909293230
I got more Space videos which I have talked with the maker of these videos to put online, I am gonna do that, put more space videos online within the next few days and do a space video blog at http://space.video-blog.eu