Burt Rutan Quotes

Burt Rutan — American Scientist born on June 17, 1943,

Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is 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 and moldless composite construction for homebuilt aircraft... (wikipedia)

The photographs of space taken by our astronauts have been published all over the place. But the eye is a much more dynamic mechanism than any camera or pictures. It's a more exciting view in person than looking at the photographs. Of course, I personally am sick and tired of hearing people talk like that: I want to see it myself!

With any luck, by the time NASA's space probe hits Pluto, you'll be booking a spaceflight with a privately run suborbital airline.

It's not good enough for us to have generations of kids that... look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it. They need to look forward to exploration.

There was a wonderful little short four-year time period when marvelous things happened. It started in 1908, when the Wright brothers flew in Paris, and everybody said, 'Ooh, hey, I can do that.' There's only a few people that have flown in early 1908. In four years, 39 countries had hundreds of airplanes, thousands of pilots.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.

Burt Rutan Quotes

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