Burt Rutan Quotes
The Russians did much bigger space launch vehicles for launching satellites and for getting men in orbit. They did that much sooner than America because America was very good at something else.
Rutan, Burt. "The real future of space exploration." TED, Feb. 2006, www.ted.com/talks/burt_rutan_the_real_future_of_space_exploration.
Medaris then told him to do it in 90 days to give him some slack. 80 days later the U. S. put its first satellite in orbit with a Jupiter Rocket. There were scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who had been experimenting with rocket recovery, who realized that they had enough power and technique to escape the Earth’s gravity and put an object in orbit. The asked for permission to do so on their next weekly firing and were refused. Two months later, the Russians put Sputnick in orbit.
In the weightlessness of space, physical strength is not a major advantage.
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is a retired American aerospace engineer and entrepreneur noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, and energy-efficient air and space craft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager, which in 1986 was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which in 2006 set the world record for the fastest (342 mph/551 km/h in 67 hours) and longest (25,766 miles/41,466 km) nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation flight in history. In 2004, Rutan's sub-orbital spaceplane design SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space, winning the Ansari X-Prize that year for achieving the feat twice within a two-week period.
