Word: rutan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the first American flew into space in 1961, Burt Rutan was a 17-year-old college freshman. Listening to news of Alan Shepard's groundbreaking suborbital flight on the radio, Rutan was euphoric. He too hoped to go into space one day--and was disappointed that a cautious NASA had allowed the Soviets to beat the U.S. to the prize. "We could have had the first man in space," Rutan recalls, "and we sent a monkey instead...
...possibilities back then seemed limitless, and it was easy for Rutan's generation to imagine they would all get to taste zero-gravity one day. It didn't work out that way. After NASA reached the moon in 1969, its focus shifted to unmanned probes, orbital experiments and a costly low-orbit shuttle system. The imagined future of Everyman as astronaut evaporated. This year, more than four decades after Shepard's flight, only two Americans have made the jump into space from U.S. soil--both launched not by NASA but by Rutan's tiny company, known for build-your...
...Rutan personally designed their craft, SpaceShipOne, a vehicle as improbable as it is revolutionary. The size of a small biplane, SpaceShipOne is a shell of woven graphite glued onto a rocket motor that runs on laughing gas and rubber. The nose is punctuated by portholes, like an ocean liner. Inside, the critical instrument is a Ping-Pong ball decorated with a smiley face and attached to the cabin with a piece of string, which goes slack when the pilot reaches the zero-gravity of suborbital space...
Success for Rutan's maverick creation was by no means assured. There were 24 teams competing for the X Prize purse, which was set to expire at the end of this year. Modeled on the Orteig Prize--which motivated Charles Lindbergh's celebrated transatlantic flight in 1927--the X Prize was created to fuel a competition in space liners, just as its predecessor inspired the early airlines. Imaginations ran wild. The Canadian Da Vinci Project wanted to launch its rocket from 80,000 ft. after lifting it there with a reusable helium balloon. John Carmack, creator of the Doom video...
...ever said flying into space was easy, especially if you build your rocket yourself. SPACESHIPONE, designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Michael Melvill, 63, made such a trip last week, climbing 64 miles above the Mojave Desert, with some scary corkscrewing along the way. The flight is the first of two the ship must make--the second is this week--to win a $10 million prize...