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04/20/2005: Space...The Final Frontier...
After reading their rants about "Personal Flying vehicles"....I’m sure BSTommy and others will have lots to say about this one:"Space for the Rest of Us" will be addressed in a speech by famed aviation/spacecraft designer and spaceflight entrepreneur Burt Rutan, scheduled to be delivered to the National Press Club on Thursday, May 19.
Described by Newsweek as "the man responsible for more innovations in modern aviation than any living engineer," Rutan is expected to address such unique and innovative topics as the future of space travel and the development of affordable space tourism.
Rutan, the founder and Chief Executive of Mojave, Calif.-based aerospace research company Scaled Composites, designed the legendary Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the world non-stop without refueling in 1989. One of his more recent projects, the Virgin GlobalFlyer, broke Voyager's record time and became the first non-stop, solo flight around the world
In 2004, Rutan made international headlines as the designer/developer of SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately- built manned spacecraft to reach space, and as the winner of the $10 million X prize, the competition created to spur the development of affordable space tourism. The development and launch of SpaceShipOne, financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was featured in a Peabody Award-winning Discovery Channel documentary "Black Sky: The Race for Space." A 60 Minutes profile, "Burt Rutan: An American Original," aired in November 2004.
Winner of the Presidential Citizen's Medal, the Collier Trophy (1987 and 2005), and the Charles A. Lindbergh Award, Rutan predicts that "private spaceflight will be a multibillion-dollar business and every child will know that he will be able to go to orbit in his lifetime."
Courtesy US News Wire.
Karen on 04.20.05 @ 03:02 PM CST
