Burt Rutan Retires From Scaled Composites 87
hondo77 writes "Lost in all of the April Fool's Day fun was the news that Burt Rutan retired on April 1. 'Five of his planes now hang in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, including the Voyager, which in 1986 became the first airplane to fly around the world without refueling, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private rocket plane ever to put a man into space.' Enjoy your retirement, Burt. You've earned it." Watching SpaceShipOne fly in 2004 is one of the happiest memories of my life. Thanks, Mr. Rutan.
Bummer... (Score:2)
Regardless good luck Burt!
There are few aircraft designers left (Score:5, Interesting)
Few people working today have actually designed a high performance airplane. Ben Rich, who ran the Lockheed Skunk Works and designed the propulsion system for the SR-71, wrote on his retirement that he worked on 26 airplanes during his career, but today's aircraft designer would be lucky to work on one.
For the first time since WWII, the USAF no longer has a new fighter plane in development. If and when it becomes necessary to design one, who will know how? Nobody will have the practical experience to get it right.
Rutan was one of the few people who consistently got exotic designs right. He will be tough to replace.
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Absolutely!
I am not an American, and therefore have absolutely no obligation to support US attempts to conquer the world.
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Which nation? China already has more control over US than US government itself. And I, being neither American nor Chinese, don't care about that particular aspect.
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"Dogfighting is a thing of the past, and you don't need a pilot to
guide a plane which carries missiles."
Write in indelible ink on you forehead, "I r ignorant of history"
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That's kind of a weird statement. As systems become more complex the need for specialists increases. Sure, you won't find a Rutan involved in total design, but that's because it's becoming impossible to actually know this much about modern aeronautics.
To bring it back home, would you ex
Re:There are few aircraft designers left (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. Yes I would.
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All fine and good. Until you lose the signal. NOTHING can replace a set of eyeballs in the cockpit.
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Can't stop the signal, Mal.
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The thing is there's no peer state to compete with on that level anymore. Neither side at this time can manufacture thousands of the fighters we already have vs taking the time to develop and deploy a new fighter. There's several things that are true here:
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he worked on 26 airplanes during his career, but today's aircraft designer would be lucky to work on one.
For the first time since WWII, the USAF no longer has a new fighter plane in development. If and when it becomes necessary to design one, who will know how?
The reason that they designed and then discarded so many aircraft in those days is that back then, *they* didn't know how.
If I had a choice between an experienced aircraft designer from the 1960s, or just all the written design documentation from the latest planes, I'd take the latter.
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um that isn't true.
The F-22 and F-35 are just coming out. the scram jet engines for the next set of planes are still in testing.
Of course the next set of planes aren't being designed they are still be theorized. As all development cycles mature they slow down.
Saying there aren't new planes being designed is like saying there aren't tanks being designed. just because it isn't being shown to you doesn't make it so.
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Re:There are few aircraft designers left (Score:4, Insightful)
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The USAF no longer has a new MANNED fighter plane in development.
FTFY.
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Yes, the F-35 will probably be the last generation of manned fighter planes for the US, and Lockheed is even running an R+D program to develop an unmanned version of it.
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Rutan was one of the few people who consistently got exotic designs right. He will be tough to replace.
Indeed he will. Since he started designing aircraft, he's been a hero. The "Skunk Works" was always the top innovator, but they stuck to military designs exclusively. Rutan designed craft for the basic Joe Shmoe civilian. He started designing and producing kits for Joe to put together in his garage and fly to the local airshows. Then he started producing full blown ready made aircraft that Joe could buy. I hope he keeps a finger or 2 in the Scaled Composites pie, maybe staying on as Engineer Emeritus.
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The next war, heck the current war is fought with drones. Those are under heavy development. Fighter planes with human pilots are last centuries tech.
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Slashdot has never been a news site. It's an aggregator.
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On April Fool's day any major story is automatically assumed to be a hoax. Nobody would believe the truth on that day.
Actually, now that I think about it, people aren't that good at distinguishing truth from fiction on any day. Parent is right - try posting something true some April Fool's Day. It would be the most successful slashdot trick ever.
New Company? (Score:2)
He just doesn't come across as somebody who can sit around.
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memories (Score:1)
I still have a copy of a magazine from 1976 (Air Progress, I think) with the Varieze on the cover, and announcing a new approach to home built aircraft. That aircraft changed the way a lot of us l
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Aircraft won't be the same: he was one of the few people I knew of who seemed to understand both aerodynamics and structure.
I remember being in high-school, a friend's grandfather was a retired metal shop worker who built long ezs in his spare time. It was truly inspiring to see such an advanced craft, only to find out the design was over 15 years old. The thing is one of the most graceful light aircraft I have ever seen.
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He's retiring, not dead. Burt's retiring could be pretty good for light sport, in that, he will have lots of free time and a good chance that he might want to design himself a new light sport aircraft :-)
Glad that it happened (Score:3)
I can't help feeling disappointed to lose the service of Burt Rutan.
I'll try to take the advice of Dr. Seuss - don't cry because it's over, just smile that it happened. Thanks for the coolest aerospace innovation ever.
Truly an inspiration (Score:3)
I guess you could say he's scaling back? Anyway Burt Rutan did a great job at combining imagination, technology, and the wisdom at meshing the two. If one looks at his flock of planes throughout the years you'll find some of the most unusual planes ever developed. Asymmetrical? No problem. Dual wing? No problem. Supersonic? No problem? Cheap bizjet and fighter jets? No problem.
The man is a genius and will go down in history with Leonardo Da Vinci, Otto Lilienthal, The Wright Brothers, Charles Lindburgh and Amelia Earhart. He is truly a pioneer in aerospace and science in general. It is his innovations in composite materials and airframe design that have pushed far beyond what anybody saw coming from civilian aviation. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the "ufo" sightings people see are his creations also.
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This is Slashdot, not Wikipedia and its a short quick list not an all inclusive who's who.
Rutan's Solotaire (Score:1)
In 1982, I met Burt Rutan, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager at the airshow in Oshkosh. Burt was presenting his Solotaire self-launching sailplane which had just won a competition sponsored by the EAA. I was interested in self-launching sailplanes and good designs were rare. After the award ceremony, I accosted Burt, Dick and Jeana as they were walking away and they were kind enough to sit with me at a picnic table for awhile discussing airplane designs, flight characteristics and flight safety.
A Titan takes a well-deserved break (Score:3)
Good luck, and Godspeed Mr. Rutan.
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We see the reason you post as an A.C.
Hopefully he'll do a Brett Favre (Score:3, Informative)
From Burt's Wikipedia page
On July 29, 2009, Burt Rutan drew a full house for his presentation at the Experimental Aircraft Association's EAA Airventure 2009 Oshkosh Conference entitled "Non-Aerospace Research Quests of a Designer/Flight Test Engineer" where he discussed his thoughts on his hobby of climate change.[40] Although he admitted in his presentation that he was not a climate scientist, he stated he spent most of his career on data analysis and interpretation and how it is used or misused.[41]
"I put myself in the (Those who fear expansion of Government control) group, and do not hide the fact that I have a clear bias on [ Anthropogenic global warming (AGW)]. My bias is based on fear of Government expansion and the observation of AGW data presentation fraud - not based on financial or any other personal benefit. I merely have found that the closer you look at the data and alarmists’ presentations, the more fraud you find and the less you think there is an AGW problem... For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion – “if someone is aggressively selling a technical product whose merits are dependent on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit."
He describes his interest on the climate change topic as deriving from his "interest in technology, not tree hugging". Burt Rutan's house was featured in a November 1, 1989 article in Popular Science entitled: "21st Century Pyramid: The Ultimate Energy-efficient House".[42]
Rutan will also not interview with Scientific American, as he claimed that the magazine has "...improperly covered man-made global warming. They drink Kool-Aid instead of doing research. They parrot stuff from the IPCC and Al Gore."
Never retire (Score:2)
Thanks (Score:4, Informative)
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Depends on what you mean by "spaceplane" doesn't it? If you're going to define it as a craft that can break orbit under it's own power and then land again under its own power (as I would be inclined to) then even the Space Shuttle doesn't even come close. But then, the Shuttle never even came close to living up to what it was initially sold as, now did it? At least SpaceShipOne delivered on what was promised.
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Retire? (Score:2)
Can a man like Rutan really properly retire?
I can't imagine that his brain will just suddenly stop getting ideas and solving problems in new ways. Retire as CEO, sure. But he will either come in a couple of days a week or start doing some interesting home projects.
That's my hope, anyway.
Burt Rutan has made a real contribution to human knowledge and understanding. He has also been an inspiration to quite a few of us in many different fields.
It was a priviliege... (Score:5, Insightful)
I had the privilege of working on Rutan's Vantage jet doing design and S&C verification. At the time, I worked for the only man considered a peer to Rutan, Jan Roskam, though only those in the aerospace industry would know him. The Vantage was a great plane, and Rutan and his company earned my respect and admiration. The respect was mutual, and an engineer who studied under the president of the company I worked for went on to become a VP at Scaled.
Another poster mentioned how there is an obvious lack of good aircraft designers today. Being someone in the aerospace industry, I agree with that 100%. This isn't just a "darn, the kids these days" rant. There is a demonstrable lack of creativity and ability in the younger generation of aerospace engineers. Some of this may be due to a lack of progress in the field (NASA has gone to hell, the USAF doesn't need any more aircraft), some of it could be due to a lack of desire to put in the effort (which is tremendous) to become a great aerospace engineer. I wish I knew. Hopefully soon we will have some truly bright engineers come to the forefront of aircraft design.
So, let me say that it was a privilege to be in the industry both competing with and cooperating with you, Mr. Rutan. I don't know if I'll ever have such a chance again. Thank you for that, and for your contributions to aviation. Best of luck to you.
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Honestly, it partly the fault of modern computers. They've stopped teaching, or at least harping on, the basics in college and once you get out into the real world you barely ever do hand calculations. I was one of the first classes where computers were ruquired for every student in my college, and I'll be honest - it's taken me twenty years to separate myself from the blind reliance and really understand the underlying science so that I can think without running simulation after simulation.
The guys who a
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That reminds me of a comment about Kelly Johnson by his boss. He said "that damn Swede can actually see the air". That is the highest compliment I can imagine.
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Rutan is a climate change denialist (Score:1)
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He also believes he knows, with absolute certainty, who killed JFK. If asked about it, he'll say its impossible for anyone who hasn't done his research to understand the proof.
He also is convinced (and claims to have proof) of a theory he's made up that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids using some sort of long-forgotten technology for casting granite.
He will be back (Score:2)
Mark my words, he will be back. Folks like him get to where they are because they have this fire in their belly, and the only way to extinguish it is by working on what they love. Guess what, this doesn't go away just because you arbitrarily declare that you're "retired".
Savour your retirement my friend! (Score:1)