Flight pioneer lands on campus

Rutan's celebrity rockets contest to another plane

By Brad Riggin
rigginb@mscd.edu

Anyone walking through the Auraria Event Center Nov. 12 might have thought they landed in Hollywood and spotted a superstar.

A tall, grey-haired man with sideburns racing down his jaw was mobbed by dozens of photographers and people who just wanted to hear him speak.

Most Metro students do not know who Burt Rutan is, but in the aviation world Rutan is a superstar. Rutan made a visit to campus Saturday to speak to students about his prolific role in private space travel.

Rutan only makes roughly four public appearances a year, according to Don Morris, a Metro aerospace graduate and director of education for Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. The museum chose Metro to host the first Burt Rutan Design Competition because of the strength of the college's aerospace program and the opportunity to connect the legend with students.

The event brought together 82 teams of high school and middle school students, who took part in a timed competition to solve a design problem. Each team's finished product was judged by Rutan, Willy Daniels, a Metro graduate and United Airlines pilot and Jeff Forrest, chair of Metro's Aviation and Aerospace Science Department.

One top winner from the high school teams and one top winner from the middle school teams received $500 and a medal.

Rutan told students during a 30-minute speech following the competition that private space travel would be available to them in coming years.

"I'll make a prediction right now that in 15 years, every one of you kids will know that, if you want to, you can go into orbit in your lifetime," he said.

Rutan said NASA has given the public the notion that private space flight will not be available to them in their lifetime.

NASA has told the public for more than 30 years that they are working on a safe and affordable space flight for the public, but they have made no progress, he said.

"The crazy thing is that even though there is a promise that we're (NASA) working on it, well, they're really not working on it. There is not a government research goal and plan and energy working toward private space flight," Rutan said.

America did not need the government to develop airliner travel and the public does not need NASA to develop private space flight, he said.

Rutan developed his own spacecraft in response to a nationwide competition last year. The first spacecraft to exceed an altitude of 328,000 feet twice within a two-week period won a $10 million prize.

Rutan won the competition, the Ansari X Prize, when his SpaceShipOne was the first to accomplish the feat.

He said his spacecraft is a generic breakthrough that has made re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere safe enough for the public to use.

"What we are doing right now is moving into commercial availability, because we have improved safety," he said.

After the industry gets an early return on investments by charging the wealthy more than $100,000 to fly, space travel will become more affordable.

"We have to wait for the billionaires to fly first," Rutan said. "It (space flight) will be unavailable to the public for the next 10 or more years until there is a return on investment."