Pricelessly factual: "An earned Doctorate is given to you in hope that you'll do something great. An Honorary Doctorate is given to you because you already have." Burt is a national treasure. He has the spirit of humanity about him. His take on how to run a company and keep employees happy and engaged in productive activity, rather than just activity, runs parallel with his design and engineering brilliance. He's done massive amounts of government-related engineering work beyond his commercial/civil work at RAF and Scaled. And when he releases his autobiography (relatively soon) it be an eye-opening document. A must read, without a doubt, from a man driven by fact and sound logic rather than self-promoting agendas. God bless him!
There are plenty of men who can design and build new and innovative aircraft. None of those men loved powered flight as much as Burt. That’s why he was so amazing.
Nice talk and I really liked the rocket in a balloon analogy. But more the size of a city block and a mile tall. Maybe 12 Hindenberg size vehicals to hold it up on this planets surface. Thanks for the inspiration.
A most amazing man. You don't have to listen to him long to know where he stands politically. He's smart, so it came as no surprise to me. Thanks for sharing!
It was a real shame that Burt Rutan stopped designing + selling his plans/kits for Q2/Q200 (2 seater side-by-side) for Q2 with a 64hp VW engine and for Q200 a 100hp Continental 0-200 engine. (Mazda, Rotax, Corsair and Subaru were some of the cheaper auto engines used in place of the Continental)
He was attacked by liability lawyers and got out of the business. He defended himself in court as his own lawyer...and won. But, he saw the evil future and got out of that business.
I know this probably won't get answered, but if You took a BD 5J and turned it into a delta wing or even sweep the wings back? Also the AVROCAR built with today's building materials and a SEARL GENERATORS in the center and with enough speed it will generate a hovering effect, could this not be done on today's technology for a lot cheaper and a lot lighter than an idea from the 1950's?
Burt heavily criticized Jim Bede in a different YT video for hedging build times and support after the sale and they turned off comments for obvious reasons but I am determined to speak my peace. Burt Rutan had great designs and I owned a Varieze too but he was as guilty as Bede for all the things he said. The EZ designs took much longer to build than he stated and were not EZ!! He also closed shop and left a lot of builders hanging in the last EZ designs for parts and builder support. Just saying.....
Interesting to hear, but not entirely surprising. Aviation lends itself to these characters. Do you know where I could read more about this? Rutan is definitely an accomplished individual but I've also heard some unsavoury comments about him, but I guess that's to be expected of anyone.
They were answering inquiries and offering builder support for many years after they stopped selling plans. Above and beyond what would reasonably be expected. And in fact there are still people building those aircraft today.
I saw a video on YT from KItplanes, where an aero-engineer built a Long EZ in 1995, long after Rutan stopped selling plans. So, the support from 3rd parties is still out there. Rutan was never in the kitplane business, he only sold plans. The materials to build the plane came from 3rd parties.
Burt Rutan specifically kept RAF (Rutan Aircraft Factory) open for tech support for over 20+ years after he stopped selling plans. His wife ran the phone line into the early 2000's. Burt stated many times that he would remain open to provide basic builder support until the money ran out. And as far as I know, he did. He only closed shop because MULTIPLE homebuilders or their surviving family Sued him on multiple counts. One was because the deceased pilot/builder had omitted all of the reinforcement tapes for the vertical stabilizers because he determined it didn't need it. The family KNEW this, and sued anyway. This cost him a substantial amount as he had to fly to the wreckage and inspect the plane as to why the vertical stabilizers departed the aircraft. Quickie Aircraft was also sued when a builder crashed his Q2 and there was nothing the problem with the airplane. This put QAC out of business after costing them over $1M to defend themselves. So yeah, irrational incompetent and dishonest customers cost everyone in the homebuilt community. Burt exited the industry never to return. He also sold/licensed the rights to produce all the companies printed material as a digital CD rom as an information pack, that was sold by another company. And still is TO THIS DAY it's available online for around $300. And includes ALL of the Canard Pusher newsletters. Just because the LongEZ wasn't "Easy" by a not so savvy aircraft builders idea of easy. Doesn't make it un true. Try building a Pitts Special from scratch. You must learn to fit and fabricate tubing, weld, inspect welds, form sheet metal cowling, build wood spars, brace everything accurately with flying wires, align the wings and everything together by adjusting the flying wires lengths, while keeing them all perfectly the same tension in all directions. Then cover the entire aircraft in fabric, stitch and tape everything, coat and paint it. Then you must learn to repair and inspect it. And it will constantly have major issues throughout its life and take 3,000+ hrs to build and probably never fly more than 300hrs after you scare yourself because you cant see the entire airport let alone the runway on landing. Vans RV 4s were not available when RAF was selling VariEZ and LongEZ plans. That model is the one that changed the Homebuilt kit market to what it is today. And try building an RV-4 before they came pre-drilled. It was not EZ. And you can't remove the wings for transport, so once its complete you rent a hangar until you sell it. A long ez can unbolt the wings in an afternoon and fit in a car trailer for storage. This is pretty rudimentary and the Vans aircraft just can't. Also, they cost no leas than $50-75k to complete. A LongEZ can still be built for around half that.
100,000,000 pounds in orbit. dragon capsule out of this solar system at reasonable speed. solar brake. less than dirt optical sighting problem. on order? 150 foot diameter jet engine and large glider with rocket engines at the front.
