Burt Rutan is my greatest living hero. He is best known as the head of Scaled Composites, the company that built Space Ship One and won the Ansari X Prize for private space flight in 2004. That accomplishment alone earns Rutan my deepest respect. Rutan is more than a designer and a businessman, though. He is a visionary. He believes passionately in the value of space exploration and sees it as the natural and necessary next step for mankind. Rutan seems to be moved by a vision of man at his best: learning, exploring, and creating great things. As far as I'm concerned, Rutan is that kind of man.
In this 2006 talk, Rutan talks about how truly valuable space exploration will only happen through the efforts of entrepreneurs in the private sector (the coming "capitalist space race"), and how this exploration is necessary as an inspiration for our children.
Wonderful talk, Amy! Thanks for pointing it out to me.
ReplyDeleteA lump came to my throat when he started talking about how kids today are not inspired the way those who grew up in the 1908-1912 boom. Or those who, like him, grew up in the 40's and 50's. Or those who grew up in the Apollo heyday.
Watching a recent Discovery special on the history of Houston mission operations -- where I cut my teeth after college -- they interviewed everybody from icons like Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz to former colleagues of mine. Watching the documentary it occurred to me: at age 42 I have no direct memory of "the good NASA" of back in the day.
The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions are nothing more than third grade history lessons to me. My first dim memories of "real time" mission operations are of the Apollo-Soyuz missions of 1975. Missions that many in the NASA trenches (i.e Kranz) decried as political exercises to appease the Soviets at the expense of using the last Saturn rocket to launch a fourth and final science mission to Skylab.
My next memories are of the debacle of the Skylab re-entering the atmosphere because delays in the Space Shuttle Program. I remember the first Space Shuttle launch, but I remember nothing more until Challenger. The professor of my first college astronautics class had to break that one to us. By the time Columbia rolled around, I would rather work as a grip in Hollywood than as an aerospace engineer.
Backing into a "day job" that landed me on the flight line at Mojave five weeks after taking it changed my mind about just how burnt I was on aerospace.
I fear for the kids yet to be inspired. Will I be one to inspire? Time will tell, I guess.
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