Aerospace entrepreneur, Virgin Galactic spacecraft designer, and founder of aerospace research firm Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan was described by Newsweek as “the man responsible for more innovations in modern aviation than any living engineer.” A bold visionary with a passion for the advancement of technology, he was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Inc. magazine and one of “the world’s 100 most influential people” by TIME.
Rutan designed the legendary Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the world nonstop without refueling. SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately funded spacecraft, won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, created to spur the development of affordable space tourism. In a joint venture with Virgin’s Richard Branson, Rutan formed “The Spaceship Company” to manufacture and market spaceships for the new commercial space-flight industry. Retiring from Scaled Composites as Chief Technical Officer in April 2011, he now assumes the title of founder and Chairman Emeritus.
In 2004 The Spaceship Company launched Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline. So far Virgin Galactic has contracted five SpaceShipTwo tourist spacecrafts and two White Knight Two motherships to the paying public, along with suborbital to provide sub-orbital spaceflights space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites. Rutan believes that the best ideas come from the collaborative efforts of small, closely-knit project teams and an environment not limited by adversity to risk. He inspires audiences with his vision on creativity, innovation and managers’ tasks to motivate a creative team. Rutan was profiled by 60 Minutes and featured on the covers of both LIFE and TIME.
“As usual, Burt was the hit of the conference. There were nearly 2,000 audience members who gave him a standing ovation, and hundreds in line afterwards for photos and autographs. Fantastic!”- BEA Systems
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