Science is not about consensus, and consensus is not science. Burt Rutan More Quotes by Burt Rutan More Quotes From Burt Rutan When theres ever a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back and find a time period when the consensus was 'well, thats nonsense!', so what that means is that a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense. Burt Rutan nonsense creative mean I believe that research, that you can claim that you're doing research only if half of the people, and I'm talking about half of the experts, believe that the goal is impossible. Burt Rutan talking believe people Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The smart people dont. Burt Rutan breakthrough smart people Everything looks nonsensical before it works. Burt Rutan nonsensical looks A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense. Burt Rutan nonsense have-confidence research Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding Burt Rutan testing-yourself marketing understanding NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation. Burt Rutan aversion innovation risk Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd. Burt Rutan technology space years I don't see anything beneficial about the US spending 100 billion dollars to go back to the moon unless we learn something new that will help us go to the moons of Saturn okay and so we ought to use that to breed new breakthroughs and to test new breakthroughs and to fund it. Burt Rutan dollars moon use The next 15 years will see thousands of people leave the atmosphere on suborbital flights. My company's SS2 system might fly 100,000 people by 2024. If it is shown to be highly profitable, perhaps we will see 20,000 people traveling to orbit by 2035, and then thousands to the moon by 2050. If we make a courageous decision, like the program we kicked off for Apollo, we will see our grandchildren in outposts on other planets. Burt Rutan future grandchildren moon My study is NOT as a climatologist, but from a completely different perspective in Burt Rutan airplane data lying Achieving something that has never existed in manned spaceflight and that is high volume and public access. Burt Rutan spaceflight achieve volume I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now. Burt Rutan space important reason Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again. Burt Rutan airplane design intelligent A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again. Burt Rutan astronaut creative littles We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration. Burt Rutan dream fun travel Virgin Galactic, which will be operating SpaceShipTwo, will be only one of several spacelines. The competitors for Virgin include the Russians, Bezos's Blue Origin, and possibly Rocketplane Kistler. And likely a couple of others who are smart enough not to tell people what they are doing! Burt Rutan smart couple blue Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epoch flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable. Burt Rutan effort government space NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization. Burt Rutan organization should-have order At various times over 20 years, I did preliminary designs for aircraft like the Stratolaunch. For that whole time I was encouraging us to do something that almost everyone else felt you could not do. Burt Rutan various design years
