Spaceship guru roasts his rivals
Burt Rutan takes aim at NASA, FAA, other space companies
 | Spaceship designer Burt Rutan, right, listens to Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart after a luncheon address at the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. |
AP |
LOS ANGELES — X Prize winner Burt Rutan took humorous aim at virtually everyone else in the space business Thursday, throwing zingers at NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and his competitors in the nascent space tourism industry — many of whom were in the audience.
The designer of the first private-sector rocket plane to reach outer space drew laughter — and a few winces — during a luncheon address here at the International Space Development Conference. The general tone of the talk was that of a celebrity roast, with the celebrity doing all the roasting.
Rutan, 63, also laid out some ambitious personal goals, saying he wanted "to go to the moon in my lifetime" and also "see my grandchildren go to the more interesting moons of Jupiter and Saturn. However, he and his partners at Virgin Galactic also seemed to backtrack somewhat from their shorter-term ambitions for space tourism flights.
For years, Rutan has taken NASA to task for its lack of innovation, and Thursday's talk was no different. He took particular aim at NASA's plan to go to the moon with a spaceflight system that has been characterized as "Apollo on steroids" — using technologies that were pioneered over the past 40 years.
"I believe that program, as taxpayer-funded research, makes absolutely no sense," he said. "And the reason I believe that is that they're forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works, and are not creating an environment where it is possible to make a breakthrough."
He said the Apollo-based program guarantees "that you are not going to learn anything new here that is useful for you to go on to the other moons."
He wondered whether NASA's new space vision was "really a training program" for young engineers who were not familiar with the achievements of the Apollo era. "You could also describe it possibly as archaeology," he quipped.
In contrast, he held up his own work on SpaceShipOne, the privately funded spacecraft that won the $10 million X Prize in 2004; and the follow-up project for Virgin Galactic, which involves building a fleet of scaled-up "SpaceShipTwos" for suborbital tourist flights. For SpaceShipOne, Rutan developed a "carefree re-entry" design that allows the plane to right itself even if it's tumbling during descent — and also pioneered the use of lightweight composite materials.
Rutan said he was able to innovate on SpaceShipOne in part because his financial backer, software billionaire Paul Allen, left virtually all technical details of the project to Rutan's team at Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled Composites. He had even higher praise for his current backer, British billionaire Richard Branson.
He noted that under U.S. technology-transfer regulations, he was barred from sharing any technical data with Branson or Virgin Galactic's British executives — and then he added with a comic's timing: "I found out that's even better."
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
- Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM TODAY |
 Today Section Front |
| Add Today headlines to your news reader: |