{"id":622,"date":"2010-04-12T04:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/2010\/04\/12\/burt-rutan-on-forefront-manned-exploration\/"},"modified":"2013-06-30T19:54:12","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T19:54:12","slug":"burt-rutan-on-forefront-manned-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/2010\/04\/12\/burt-rutan-on-forefront-manned-exploration\/","title":{"rendered":"Burt Rutan on "Forefront Manned Exploration""},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0Burt Rutan is an American aerospace engineer famous for his design of the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period. He has four aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum. These are a few of his thoughts regarding space policy:<\/div>\n
My basic concern is that the real value of NASA’s contributions that\u00a0America realized in the 60s and early 70s is now being completely\u00a0discarded. How can we rationalize a surrender of our preeminence in\u00a0human spaceflight?\u00a0 In my mind, the important NASA accomplishments are\u00a0twofold:\u00a0 1) The technical breakthroughs achieved by basic research (not\u00a0by Development programs like Constellation) and 2) The Forefront Manned\u00a0Exploration that provided the inspiration for our youth to plan careers\u00a0in engineering\/science and that established the U.S. as the world leader\u00a0in technology.<\/div>\n
In short, it is a good idea indeed for the commercial community to\u00a0compete to re-supply the ISS and to bring about space access for the\u00a0public to enjoy. I applaud the efforts of SpaceX, Virgin and Orbital in\u00a0that regard and feel these activities should have been done at least two\u00a0decades ago.\u00a0 However, I do not see the commercial companies taking\u00a0Americans to Mars or to the moons of Saturn within my lifetime and I\u00a0doubt if they will take the true Research risks (technical and\u00a0financial) to fly new concepts that have low confidence of return on\u00a0investment.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0Even NASA, regarded as our prime Research agency has not\u00a0recently shown a willingness to fly true Research concepts.<\/div>\n
For years I have stated that a NASA return-to-moon effort must include\u00a0true Research content, i.e. testing new concepts needed to enable\u00a0forefront Exploration beyond the moon<\/b>.\u00a0 The current Ares\/Orion does not\u00a0do that.\u00a0 While I have been critical of Constellation for that reason, I\u00a0do not think that NASA should ‘give up’ on manned spaceflight, just that\u00a0they should be doing it while meeting the 1) or 2) criteria above.<\/div>\n
Some have guessed that my recent comments are based on my overall\u00a0displeasure with the Obama Administration. They are not; however it does\u00a0seem that the best technical minds in U.S. industry are still striving\u00a0to find HOW America can continue to be “exceptional”, while the\u00a0Administration does not want America to BE “exceptional”.<\/div>\n
Burt Rutan
http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/blogs\/hyperbola\/2010\/02\/burt-rutan-sets-the-record-str.html<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Burt Rutan is an American aerospace engineer famous for his design of the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period. He has four aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mission-plans","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}