Burt Rutan...

can you say “SMART”?. Damn. However, to say that the private sector equates or insures safety… i dunno. and $100,000 isnt really cost efficient, but its a start. but this guy is amazing. i wonder if he supports mufon.com? cool post.

It doesn’t exactly surprise me that the private sector can do something not just better, but more efficiently than the government. Why be surprised?


If I have my math right, $100,000 goes into $20 million 200 times. I’d say that is pretty cost efficient from the purchasing side of things. For every $1 spent by the private company(ies), NASA spends $200 on red tape. Then again, my math could be horribly off…

Well, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but this is a vast, truly vast, oversimplification of the situation. Burt Rutan is a great guy, but he’s an experimental airplane builder. You can get away with a lot of stuff that way. If he had to design and build anything to real FAR standards he would be just as “inefficient” as NASA or a major commercial manufacturer. Not that NASA hasn’t made mistakes, but if Rutan had to operate on the same scale he’d face many of the same problems. He does what he does (and prefers it that way) because he has a small, agile organization that does cool stuff.


Most people don’t realize just how much on the ragged edge SpaceShipOne really was. Notice how they’re not volunteering to take anyone up today?


Let’s wait and see how long it takes him to get an FAA certified airplane ready for passenger service. (Hint: don’t hold your breath.)

i had thoughts about what dave just said. however, still a very interesting guy and smart dude. i wonder if insurance premiums would be enough to keep SpaceShipOne (okay, thats not the most original name i’ve ever heard). what the heck does dave do?! is he a rocket scientist?

Well, I was a little bit leery about commenting because it’s so easy to come off negative. But you guys are so cool


Just to amplify on Tim’s comment, I design airplanes for a major commercial aerospace company located in the Seattle area. You’ve probably flown our planes if you’ve ever flown, say, more than 200 miles. And if you’re flying 10 years from now you may be flying on what I’m working on now.


I know and work closely with lots of people who know Burt Rutan and I am the first to give him major props for his accomplishments. However, his bashing NASA here is uncalled for (but of course it makes a good pop-science story which is why Wired picked it up, and he may not have said it exactly as written, either.)


Winning the X-prize was an amazing accomplishment, but don’t buy the hype of how “easy” it was. It was pretty much a ragged edge mission, especially the second one (which had to take place within a specificed time of the first one to win the prize).


Rutan gets to run a little chop shop which is a far cry from, say, Bo*ing. It’s a very cool chop shop, but it doesn’t have to live by anything like the same rules.


I’d love to see the insurance rates on commercial SpaceShipOne flights right now (and you think medical malpractice insurance is steep…


pax
dave

Well we all know that at major aerospace corporations us engineers have our own butler and maid to keep our palatial offices clean and well stocked with vintage brandy, and with tea and crumpets delivered promptly at 3 pm… Oh wait, that must be the other major aerospace companies. ;)