Word: rutan
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...fascinating success of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne [Nov. 29] opens a brilliantly lit pathway out of the gloom and disappointment in which man has been stranded since the Challenger and Columbia space-shuttle disasters. SpaceShipOne minimizes risks to itself and its crew. SpaceShipOne works its way into space and is the most human-friendly space vehicle man has yet devised...
...Burt Rutan has opened the door to relatively cheap travel to outer space. His creativity exemplifies the blaze of the American spirit...
...excited to read about the coolest inventions of the year [Nov. 29]. With his innovative SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan hit the ball not just out of the park but right out of the atmosphere. I was disappointed, however, that many of the creations you chose were impractical, half-baked ideas. Consider the Snow Boat, which, by means of an aluminum boat welded around a snowmobile, is supposed to solve the problem of the vehicle's falling through the ice. That's like making a safer motorcycle by carrying it in a U-Haul. Coolness is hard to define, but ridiculousness...
Congratulations to Rutan and his team for privately developing SpaceShipOne. That's American ingenuity at its best. But your article portrayed Rutan as harboring a smug arrogance directed at NASA, an agency whose daring innovations in space flight and exploration long ago provided the coattails that Rutan latched onto. It is true that NASA's ventures have cost lives, but those were lives of pioneers who died while daring to explore. For Rutan to imply that NASA is "an airline that kills 4% of its passengers" not only misses the point but is also graceless. I hope NASA will return...
...Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro and actor William Shatner. As more people sign on, says Branson, Virgin will be able to lower the price: "This isn't just a pipe dream. We will get this to the point where thousands of people can go into space." He and Rutan plan to be aboard the first Virgin Galactic flight. A mere 46 years after Alan Shepard, if all goes according to plan, Rutan will finally, personally, get to experience his zero-gravity dream...