Ok, the yardwork's done, the car is vacuumed, Back to the soapbox. Rutan's civilian designs, Voyager aside, are futuristic and sleek, but there isn't much else there performance-wise (they glide like bricks in engine-off situations). To my mind, and even though it didn't lead as directly to outer space, Paul McCready took a much more interesting and innovative aeronautical path, but that's just one guys opinion. That aside, Rutan's place in history is assured, although as a space pioneer I'd analogize him to Santos-Dumont or Bleriot as aviation pioneers. He's a media sensation mostly, getting the public excited over space travel more than actually accomplishing something substantial. If you are a Marketing major, you may say that that in itself is substantial- but I would still disagree with you. NASA takes a lot of crap as an institution, but people tend to forget the accomplishments. A dozen men ON THE MOON. If you are too young to remember that, I really feel sorry for you- you missed the biggest space event of humankind to date- possibly only meeting the aliens will ever truly be able to top it...and I for one am eternally grateful that I was alive to experience it. Hundreds of robotic probes, dozens to distant planets, OTHER WORLDS that are now real places with dirt, rocks and sky, wind and weather, sunrises & sunsets- not just lights in the sky or pretty blobs in the eyepiece. A functioning space station before the ISP or Mir. For a long time NASA and the Air Force were the only launch alternatives around unless you worked for a company with a Cyrillic name or had a Red Star on your uniform. Decades of testing, research, hundreds of test pilots, many killed on the job, most of whom remain nameless yet to whom we owe a massive debt of gratitude. This is the legacy that Rutan drew from HEAVILY. Though he can beat an SR-71 on the short track (but not in the Grand Prix), and didn't make orbit, he still stood on the shoulders of giants and that can't be denied. NASA will always leave big shoes to fill- I doubt any one man has feet that big. --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
A rich investor AND a long track record of innovative aircraft.
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