Burt Rutan is the Wright Brothers of the 21st Century
When Wright Brothers’ First Flight took place in North Carolina in 1903, it spurned an era of development in aviation. Some of the people that benefited from this historic First Flight included Bill Boeing, Donald Douglas, Glen L. Martin, and the Lockheed Brothers. You may recognize all these names because they are names of present day aerospace companies. What is important here is the contributions made by Orville and Wilbur Wright. They’re contribution propelled human kind to flight. Now we can go any where faster because we fly there. We use flight for the defense of our country. A direct result of this historic First Flight is an era of unprecedented progress, invention, and research in the aviation industry.
The hope is Burt Rutan’s historic first flight of a commercial spacecraft known as Spaceship One will propel humans into the next frontier known as space. To add to all this, Burt Rutan and pilot Brian Binnie won the Ansari X-Prize definitely provides momentum in the right direction. I predict the legacy of Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One will be an important era of space flight research, development , and significant progress in the commercial space flight industry.
As we are speaking right now, various groups of people are starting or have started commercial / private spaceflight companies. The most famous one is Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. He has teamed up with Burt Rutan / Paul Allen’s group to make commercial space flight possible. Just in case, you didn’t know, Paul Allen company Mojave Aerospace Ventures bankrolled Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites LLC to make Spaceship One’s flight possible.
Then of course there is Elon Musk’s Space X company. This company provides commercial space launches from COTS equipment. The mission is to launch more frequently and a more economic price, and make a profit.
There is yet another company that is hoping to provide a more economic solution to the Space Shuttle. It is competing with traditional space company players, i.e Lockheed Martin, and Boeing etc. This company is known as Transformational Space, and is providing an alternate solution to the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). T/Space has also signed an agreement with NASA to compete for human space launch. It’s no surprise that T/Space is partnered up with Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites LLC to help with design.
Even Google is getting involved in space flight. There is Google’s $30 Million Lunar X Prize for cheaper space exploration. The goal is to land a commercial robotic rover on the lunar surface and send data and video back to Earth.
Already, the events unfolding show progress of commercial space flight. This is only the beginning of the journey. We will see more significant advances in commercial space flight for humans, cargo, and unmanned forthcoming.