Burt Rutan Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.”

“We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration.”

“NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization.”

“We didn't know the importance of home computers before the Internet. We had them mostly for fun, then the Internet came along and was enabled by all the PCs out there.”

“To allow public access to orbit, we would need breakthroughs that would lower the cost by a lot more than an order of magnitude and increase safety by a factor of 100 as compared to every launch system used since the first manned space flight. I think airborne launch will be a significant part of the safety solution.”

“Virgin Galactic, which will be operating SpaceShipTwo, will be only one of several spacelines. The competitors for Virgin include the Russians, Bezos's Blue Origin, and possibly Rocketplane Kistler. And likely a couple of others who are smart enough not to tell people what they are doing!”

“The criticism is, once I get something flying, I lose interest in it.”

“I drove an electric car for seven years because of its advanced technology, not because I have any concerns about energy resources. I have none at all. And when environmentalists say that global warming is dangerous, unprecedented and that we'll have a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide, it's just nonsense.”

“A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.”

“At various times over 20 years, I did preliminary designs for aircraft like the Stratolaunch. For that whole time I was encouraging us to do something that almost everyone else felt you could not do.”