This man is in the top ten of all my heroes. Whatever anyone thinks of the man, you can't deny he's done some great things. I hope he inspires many more 'do-ers' in the near future.
I've watched this 10 times and it just gets better!! Burt Rutan the greatest Aviation Innovator of our generation!! Love the Boomerang!! Got to get to Oshkosh and meet him.
I am absolutely convinced that Burt Rutan in the top 5 most important aerospace personalities in all of history. The only people who I can think hold a higher position are Wilbur and Orville Wright, Werner Von Braun, and Kelly Johnson.
Agreed that he is a VIP of Aviation. But there are many unsung hero's who laid the foundation and I would not discount. Kelly Johnson was a Brilliant Leader. So was Werner Von Braun. Burt shares many traits with these two. Both were geniuses at assembling teams and getting impossible things done, all three are "Entrepreneurs" in their own right. Burt was the best at this. Raising private money to build projects. But neither he nor the others were the one who discovered or invented the principals of flights or individual technologies that were and are so Important. The GOATS should also include: Max Munk Eastman Jacobs Robert T. Jones Theodore Theodorsen Richard Whitcomb Ludwig Prandtl Adolf Busemann For Aircraft Designers who don't get enough credit: Anthony Fokker Robert Hall Igor Sikorsky John Leland Atwood All giants in their own right, relegated to a footnote in history in spite of their achievements.
He might have been too optimistic about the timeline, but he was definitely right about the big picture. Really interesting speech. He must be really happy, that finally descendant of hist first spacecraft took passengers into space.
This guy truly is a genius!! A maverick in flight design, imagination!! Just a great man!! The last of the true thinkers. He doesn't follow stupid new technology.
This video inspired me to finally go to college 15 years ago and attempt to get into the aviation field. I never got into aviation but I finished college and gave myself a brighter future. cherish this video
elvis is right. i think we'll witness a lot of progress in space travel the next years. just as we did with computers in the nineties. it has yet begun.
It is the dynamic of private funding applied to avenues of interest that have no apparent (to most people) commercial purpose that has always moved things forward. It has almost always been the case that projects which were being privately funded in the beginning were hijacked by the government once they started to prove themselves, and then once they became successful (less than they probably would have if they'd remained private), the government took the credit.
I wonder if a suborbital airliner can actually go as fast or faster than the Concorde for a reasonable price... (if you can get no air resistance for half the flight to offset the cost of getting up to 100km) If we could though, I think we could help boost both the airline innovation cycle he talked about and the popularization of space flight. Also, speaking of commercial space ventures, I wonder what kind of incentives we'd see for big mineral companies if asteroid mining became feasible? I think it would be a while before conservationists started complaining about depleting the asteroid belt...
While I agree with some things, I have to disagree with his comparison with the internet. The reason the internet and the PC took off(pun?) is because it allows a wide variety of input from just about anyone. It has not, nor can I imagine it being, been the case that a homebrew spaceship is developed. If your neighbor built a rocket, would you try it out? Also, we need a reason to go out there. Exploration has not been enough so far.
I can understand what Rutan says, but I still find terribly sad that our progress in space engineering depends on money. Science and development should depend on real resources and not in economic investments and profit.
Well, here's the problem: Nobody thinks like that anymore. Only the highest-level movers & shakers and the lowest-level dreamers, these days, really understand that the numbers on your credit card, on your bills and your receipts, are just numbers. The world economy may not even realistically represent the proper value of world resources anymore. "Money" has become so ubiquitous, so absolute, that it's literally its own entity and its own context. I'll bet you nobody has thought in the last 50 years "Hey, what does my money actually represent?"
100,000 people will have flown sub-orbital flights by 2020? That never happened. The space programs have seen development by the private sector but still it is barely more than what was available decades ago.
Sadly, I can't think of one suborbital spaceflight company that was a success. We have SpaceX, but they occupy a totally different market than Rutan predicted.
I just love to think about, that when I have children, what I can tell them about technologies we (not) had when I was in their age: Cassettes, VHS, Computers with less power than the average smartphone today, No MP3, No Internet, No Flatscreens, different currency (at least in europe) and so on xD It's just amazing how the world changed since I was born, and I'm only 22 :D
I think manned space flight has simmered down mostly because we now have robots to do that job without the risk of losing astronauts. A noble cause none the less, space exploration is of the highest importance!
@dude58677 He makes NASA look like a bunch of idiots? While this man's feathering design may have helped reentry, NASA has delved deeper into the cosmos than any other agency or person ever has. NASA has peered 13 billion years into the past, when the universe was in its infancy. Show some respect for the organization that has gotten us where we are today, dude.
Inspiring kids begins with inspiring imitation. Building a flying model is the first step. Joining the EAA Young Eagles program is a terrific second step. This type of motivation is not coming from our schools. It requires personal mentoring at a very early age. Today's a good day to start.
what can i say about burt rutan.......... he is aviation legend.... he is a peace of history next to wright brothers, lindberg we need new ideas and we need people like burt rutan................
Here's a Wikipedia link: tinyurl[.]com[/]6x2699. The NACA guy was a bit vague, but it was essentially the same idea. Either way, Burt Rutan actually did it and proved it was possible, which is a huge achievement. The X-15 contracts were awarded in 1955 and 56, to North American and Reactions Motors for the airframe and engines, respectively. The NACA idea didn't come about until 1958, and the X-15 made its test flight the following year.
I think one major contributor to this problem is religion- Don't be startled, just think about it, it makes sense. As long as people believe they're going to Heaven, the longer they think there's no point progressing humanity.
my dear mate, if u listen to it again, astroz said that twice, Houston We have a probelm here; 13, say again please, Houston we've had a problem!!!!!!!! GO RUTAN, GO CALPOLY
People always focus on the technical benefit of NASA, ignoring its drain on industry. Now that NASA is gone, we are finally seeing companies like Virgin Galactic come into existence. Without NASA, however, these companies would have been on the scene sooner
That's where things start. The rich people pay very high prices for an early product with a lot of bugs, and the money they pay funds further research to bring the costs down and quality up. The plane was invented in the very early 1900's, but it took more than fifty years for airflight to be a reasonable means of travel for the masses. It just takes time.
think of it another way. USA spends 160billion dollars yearly for a war, and just 20 billion dolar in 10 YEARS for international space station. Imagine what you can do with 160 billion dollars per year
I agree with boldstandard at the same time power is made by power being taken. The other thing is in most economies if not all it is very hard to tell the rich what to do with their money. By the way my parents never had a computer in the 70's and they recently purchased their first true computer in 2002.
Burt Rutan understands the very simple concept that we cannot keep all our eggs in one basket. Humanity needs to be viably established off-planet before some earthbound psychopaths destroy life on Earth. May he live long and prosper and retire on the Moon.
He almost said it. I thought he would. The stagnation of NASA since the mid 70's was the result of Werner von Braun's team retiring. The Soviet space program was entirely developed by enslaved German Scientists. They all died off in the 80's as the Soviet space program slowed as well. The great space race of the late 40's through 70's was the result of a surge of captured German technologies and people.
Burt focuses on speed and speed alone when comparing aircraft. This is very narrow minded. A few simple calculations show that the EFFICIENCY of commercial air travel has more than Tripled in the time since the DC8. True the cruising speed is almost identical but a modern airliner can fly at least 40% further taking 3 times the passengers for a third of the cost Per passenger mile in fuel. Also to my knowledge the SR71 did not stop being used because it was corroded (as Burt says). It stopped being used because it was very expensive to operate and satellites took over the role. The SR71 is mostly made from Titanium which does not corrode! But I do agree with the general message of his talk. NASA was doomed to failure as soon as they landed on the moon. Game over - nothing more to aim for. When Werner Von Braun retired (after having designed the Space Shuttle concept) they lost their leader - their one man of vision and genius - and became a committee. I do have hope for the future though as Elon Musk and others take up the mantle. Ironic that a South African will make 'America' great again in space but I guess a German (Werner Von Braun) was the one that made it great before so there's nothing new there.
There are areas where he skews the facts to suit his thesis. Example the Russian "Concordski" which it was always felt owed most of its design to spies, who stole the French Anglo plans. Here is what happened at The Paris airshow, that he glossed over "At the Paris Air Show on 3 June 1973, the development program of the Tu-144 suffered severely when the first Tu-144S production airliner crashed. At the end of the officially approved demonstration flight, which was an exact repeat of the previous day's display, instead of landing as expected the aircraft entered a very steep climb before making a violent downwards manoeuvre. As it tried to recover the aircraft broke apart and crashed, destroying 15 houses and killing all six people on board the Tu-144 and eight more on the ground." It further proved unreliable and was not a "success" for the USSR. (It was not called Russia that that time).
Outer space and flying is cool and all, but we have more pressing issues on which to spend our time and resources on planet earth. Sorry man, your passion must wait (at least if we are a rational and a reasonable species).
I agree with what you said at first. But you are out of your damn mind if you think Russia is better than the USA. Mexico is a better place to live than Russia, that should tell you a lot.
my dear mate, if u listen to it again, astroz said that twice, Houston We have a probelm here; 13, say again please, Houston we've had a problem!!!!!!!! GO RUTAN, GO CALPOLY
This man is in the top ten of all my heroes. Whatever anyone thinks of the man, you can't deny he's done some great things. I hope he inspires many more 'do-ers' in the near future.
Burt Rutan is awesome. I am inspired to pursue a career in aerospace!
How did it go???
Probably the best TED talk EVER!!!
I've watched this 10 times and it just gets better!! Burt Rutan the greatest Aviation Innovator of our generation!! Love the Boomerang!! Got to get to Oshkosh and meet him.
I am absolutely convinced that Burt Rutan in the top 5 most important aerospace personalities in all of history. The only people who I can think hold a higher position are Wilbur and Orville Wright, Werner Von Braun, and Kelly Johnson.
Agreed that he is a VIP of Aviation.
But there are many unsung hero's who laid the foundation and I would not discount.
Kelly Johnson was a Brilliant Leader. So was Werner Von Braun. Burt shares many traits with these two. Both were geniuses at assembling teams and getting impossible things done, all three are "Entrepreneurs" in their own right. Burt was the best at this. Raising private money to build projects.
But neither he nor the others were the one who discovered or invented the principals of flights or individual technologies that were and are so
Important.
The GOATS should also include:
Max Munk
Eastman Jacobs
Robert T. Jones
Theodore Theodorsen
Richard Whitcomb
Ludwig Prandtl
Adolf Busemann
For Aircraft Designers who don't get enough credit:
Anthony Fokker
Robert Hall
Igor Sikorsky
John Leland Atwood
All giants in their own right, relegated to a footnote in history in spite of their achievements.
Just stopped by to say hi 👋 to virtual Burt after the Virgin Galactic flight.
He might have been too optimistic about the timeline, but he was definitely right about the big picture. Really interesting speech. He must be really happy, that finally descendant of hist first spacecraft took passengers into space.
What a great talk!
Awesome talk, but I'd love to know what he said about Bush at 1:50 ish that got such a good laugh...
This guy truly is a genius!! A maverick in flight design, imagination!! Just a great man!! The last of the true thinkers. He doesn't follow stupid new technology.
This video inspired me to finally go to college 15 years ago and attempt to get into the aviation field. I never got into aviation but I finished college and gave myself a brighter future. cherish this video
240p by the official TED account? Oh 2007...
elvis is right. i think we'll witness a lot of progress in space travel the next years. just as we did with computers in the nineties. it has yet begun.
Thats my uncles dad :D thats awsome right
1:43 is the best part😀
It is the dynamic of private funding applied to avenues of interest that have no apparent (to most people) commercial purpose that has always moved things forward. It has almost always been the case that projects which were being privately funded in the beginning were hijacked by the government once they started to prove themselves, and then once they became successful (less than they probably would have if they'd remained private), the government took the credit.
My son is 4 now, when he turns 6 I'll show him this video, along with other similar ones. I hope it will inspire him to try and reach the stars.
Did you ever.?
I wonder if a suborbital airliner can actually go as fast or faster than the Concorde for a reasonable price... (if you can get no air resistance for half the flight to offset the cost of getting up to 100km) If we could though, I think we could help boost both the airline innovation cycle he talked about and the popularization of space flight. Also, speaking of commercial space ventures, I wonder what kind of incentives we'd see for big mineral companies if asteroid mining became feasible? I think it would be a while before conservationists started complaining about depleting the asteroid belt...
While I agree with some things, I have to disagree with his comparison with the internet. The reason the internet and the PC took off(pun?) is because it allows a wide variety of input from just about anyone. It has not, nor can I imagine it being, been the case that a homebrew spaceship is developed. If your neighbor built a rocket, would you try it out? Also, we need a reason to go out there. Exploration has not been enough so far.
he already said it years ago.. today we are on those phases..
Impressive , I am very impressed of his presentation , the content, at least he caught me..
I plan to start my own space program one day.
How’s it going?
I can understand what Rutan says, but I still find terribly sad that our progress in space engineering depends on money. Science and development should depend on real resources and not in economic investments and profit.
Well, here's the problem: Nobody thinks like that anymore. Only the highest-level movers & shakers and the lowest-level dreamers, these days, really understand that the numbers on your credit card, on your bills and your receipts, are just numbers. The world economy may not even realistically represent the proper value of world resources anymore. "Money" has become so ubiquitous, so absolute, that it's literally its own entity and its own context. I'll bet you nobody has thought in the last 50 years "Hey, what does my money actually represent?"
@@a.dykeman1980 economics and reality are not contradictions. They are synonymous, wholly and completely inseparable to the end of time.
100,000 people will have flown sub-orbital flights by 2020? That never happened. The space programs have seen development by the private sector but still it is barely more than what was available decades ago.
13 years later ...and he was right
Sadly, I can't think of one suborbital spaceflight company that was a success.
We have SpaceX, but they occupy a totally different market than Rutan predicted.
I just love to think about, that when I have children, what I can tell them about technologies we (not) had when I was in their age: Cassettes, VHS, Computers with less power than the average smartphone today, No MP3, No Internet, No Flatscreens, different currency (at least in europe) and so on xD
It's just amazing how the world changed since I was born, and I'm only 22 :D
Burt Rutan is one of the greatest minds of our time. I believe that he will go down in history as such, but probably not in his lifetime.
I originally watched this on the TED website.
@ermarauder I've seen it :) thanks!!
AMAZING GUY!! they should air this or something
Its 2020 next week lol he was wroooooooonnnnnngggggg .
I still havent got my space ride! how about 2030
Does anyone know where I can find the slides? Thank you!
We will fly to the Moon and Mars.
Now it is not so far.
Actually government would contract out to Lockheed and Boeing still leaving the bill on the taxpayers. That is until it becomes profitable.
I think manned space flight has simmered down mostly because we now have robots to do that job without the risk of losing astronauts. A noble cause none the less, space exploration is of the highest importance!
is sample game can let us be stronger in this case ?...
@dude58677 He makes NASA look like a bunch of idiots? While this man's feathering design may have helped reentry, NASA has delved deeper into the cosmos than any other agency or person ever has. NASA has peered 13 billion years into the past, when the universe was in its infancy. Show some respect for the organization that has gotten us where we are today, dude.
Inspiring kids begins with inspiring imitation. Building a flying model is the first step. Joining the EAA Young Eagles program is a terrific second step. This type of motivation is not coming from our schools. It requires personal mentoring at a very early age. Today's a good day to start.
This aged well
what can i say about burt rutan..........
he is aviation legend....
he is a peace of history
next to wright brothers, lindberg
we need new ideas
and we need people like burt rutan................
Here's a Wikipedia link: tinyurl[.]com[/]6x2699.
The NACA guy was a bit vague, but it was essentially the same idea. Either way, Burt Rutan actually did it and proved it was possible, which is a huge achievement.
The X-15 contracts were awarded in 1955 and 56, to North American and Reactions Motors for the airframe and engines, respectively. The NACA idea didn't come about until 1958, and the X-15 made its test flight the following year.
It's Rainmaking Time!
How do I get in touch with Burt?
Kim Greenhouse
I hope he was joking when he said Al Gore invented the internet. I swear I heard some members of the audience laughing.
CERN invented the internet!!
cool
I think one major contributor to this problem is religion- Don't be startled, just think about it, it makes sense. As long as people believe they're going to Heaven, the longer they think there's no point progressing humanity.
my dear mate,
if u listen to it again, astroz said that twice,
Houston We have a probelm here;
13, say again please,
Houston we've had a problem!!!!!!!!
GO RUTAN,
GO CALPOLY
Still, NACA did come up with the initial idea.
People always focus on the technical benefit of NASA, ignoring its drain on industry. Now that NASA is gone, we are finally seeing companies like Virgin Galactic come into existence. Without NASA, however, these companies would have been on the scene sooner
America needs Burt Rutan to run NASA.
That's where things start. The rich people pay very high prices for an early product with a lot of bugs, and the money they pay funds further research to bring the costs down and quality up. The plane was invented in the very early 1900's, but it took more than fifty years for airflight to be a reasonable means of travel for the masses. It just takes time.
Burt Rutan rules.
think of it another way. USA spends 160billion dollars yearly for a war, and just 20 billion dolar in 10 YEARS for international space station. Imagine what you can do with 160 billion dollars per year
I agree with boldstandard at the same time power is made by power being taken. The other thing is in most economies if not all it is very hard to tell the rich what to do with their money. By the way my parents never had a computer in the 70's and they recently purchased their first true computer in 2002.
@oisiaa you forgot a huge one: HOWARD HUGHES
Burt Rutan understands the very simple concept that we cannot keep all our eggs in one basket. Humanity needs to be viably established off-planet before some earthbound psychopaths destroy life on Earth.
May he live long and prosper and retire on the Moon.
That is so true. Gotta love the "independent" media :(
He almost said it. I thought he would. The stagnation of NASA since the mid 70's was the result of Werner von Braun's team retiring. The Soviet space program was entirely developed by enslaved German Scientists. They all died off in the 80's as the Soviet space program slowed as well. The great space race of the late 40's through 70's was the result of a surge of captured German technologies and people.
Robert H. Goddard.
Burt focuses on speed and speed alone when comparing aircraft. This is very narrow minded. A few simple calculations show that the EFFICIENCY of commercial air travel has more than Tripled in the time since the DC8. True the cruising speed is almost identical but a modern airliner can fly at least 40% further taking 3 times the passengers for a third of the cost Per passenger mile in fuel. Also to my knowledge the SR71 did not stop being used because it was corroded (as Burt says). It stopped being used because it was very expensive to operate and satellites took over the role. The SR71 is mostly made from Titanium which does not corrode! But I do agree with the general message of his talk. NASA was doomed to failure as soon as they landed on the moon. Game over - nothing more to aim for. When Werner Von Braun retired (after having designed the Space Shuttle concept) they lost their leader - their one man of vision and genius - and became a committee. I do have hope for the future though as Elon Musk and others take up the mantle. Ironic that a South African will make 'America' great again in space but I guess a German (Werner Von Braun) was the one that made it great before so there's nothing new there.
we meet 240 p again
There are areas where he skews the facts to suit his thesis. Example the Russian "Concordski" which it was always felt owed most of its design to spies, who stole the French Anglo plans. Here is what happened at The Paris airshow, that he glossed over "At the Paris Air Show on 3 June 1973, the development program of the Tu-144 suffered severely when the first Tu-144S production airliner crashed.
At the end of the officially approved demonstration flight, which was an exact repeat of the previous day's display, instead of landing as expected the aircraft entered a very steep climb before making a violent downwards manoeuvre. As it tried to recover the aircraft broke apart and crashed, destroying 15 houses and killing all six people on board the Tu-144 and eight more on the ground." It further proved unreliable and was not a "success" for the USSR. (It was not called Russia that that time).
...oh..
Dat way-too-loud intro.
Outer space and flying is cool and all, but we have more pressing issues on which to spend our time and resources on planet earth. Sorry man, your passion must wait (at least if we are a rational and a reasonable species).
I agree with what you said at first.
But you are out of your damn mind if you think Russia is better than the USA.
Mexico is a better place to live than Russia, that should tell you a lot.
Burt has a limited scope of knowledge rooted in aerospace engineering but is constrained by Darwinian fear of survivability.
Yellowstone, and a random meteor or two have our number. So do bat-borne viruses, in conjunction with TCM.
my dear mate,
if u listen to it again, astroz said that twice,
Houston We have a probelm here;
13, say again please,
Houston we've had a problem!!!!!!!!
GO RUTAN,
GO CALPOLY