Burt Rutan at Idea Festival

I was very glad to find out that my town, Louisville, Kentucky, hosted IdeaFestival conference this year. It is really awesome primarily, because of the kind of speakers it drew this year.

My previous post was about SpaceShipTwo. On this conference, however, I got to see and listen to Burt Rutan, himself, the man behind this project. The man who won Ansari X-Prise by privately developing a manned spaceship that flew into space twice within two weeks. Mr. Rutan is a hero for engineers, including me. I know some general history of space exploration due to reading various books, one of them is Lost in Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age by Greg Klerkx. From this book I learned that NASA has been very inefficient about developing manned space programs. And having seen space developments going nowhere for a few decades now, ever since the moon landing, I was extremely thrilled to see an individual reaching to space with private funds (by Paul Allen). Now, this was couple years ago now, in 2004. And to me, he was somewhere elsewhere, not quite on this Earth. The chance to see this man in person looked very slim to me.

But, alas, he came to IdeaFestival to talk about his achievement and the future direction of private space business. This was a right time for me to see him as well, since I had recently discovered for myself Objectivist philosophy and had successfully integrated into my mind. What will follow is my analysis of his speech. Keep in mind that I did not have a recorder of any sort. I simply sat at his speech, and listened to everything he had to say and answer during QA session. However, I have decent memory, and went over the speech afterwards around several key points that he made during his speech.


First of all, people like Burt Rutan are a philosophical fuel for the mind, for the right kind of mind. The mind that is looking to achieve rational goals. The simple fact of seeing someone achieve a rational goal, gives one something that is usually acquired only through one's own achievement or a romantic art.

There is a quote in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, which strikes the right note to express what I mean. There is a scene where a college kid finds a product of Howard Roark, the great architect, and leaves the place with an owe that he was not fully aware of. However, the narrator, Ayn Rand, put it very precisely with a description of Roark's action: "He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime."

This is what seeing Burt Rutan means. It means 'the courage to face a lifetime.'

Amazingly (or necessarily?), Burt Rutan understood that as well. One would expect him to start from the description of his great success. However, I was astonished when he began explaining what it takes for an individual to make a breakthrough. (I suspect he thought quite a while on this topic if he decide to brought it up in the very beginning.) Burt Rutan explained that It was not the money, not the call or need of society. According to him, It all starts at a very young age where a child receives an inspiration from a great achievement at the time, such as Moon landing. Later a child grows with a courage to achieve, to strive for things that would seem impossible for mediocrity. He did not call it the courage, however, but spoke of belief in impossible. I did not like that description, but did like what he meant by it later, when described it again in some detail. He meant it as a belief in things that are deemed as impossible by others. It is unnecessarily skewed definition towards society, however, it does hold true.

His next point was debunking a popular myth that big things are accomplished by big organization, especially such as government. (Interestingly, before Burt Rutan appeared, an introduction video included a scene with SpaceShipOne and a guy standing on top of it, holding up a sign that read "SpaceShipOne, Government Zero." Audience cheered. I did, too. ) He led us through history of aviation to show that the breakthroughs were accomplished by individuals in a very short period of time. I did not know this, but in 1908 only 12 men had flown in an airplane, but by 1912, the number grew to tens of thousands. Quite amazing when you think about it. Burt Rutan made an explicit statement, if achievements were left to government, we would not even have airplanes now. The state of airlines that is present today was created by private effort, while NSAA, government organisation created for airplane development, had barely any participation at all in the process.

He made a further accent on this fact, by showing pictures of his team, only about 250 individuals had achieved something that NASA is struggling to do with all its billions of tax payers money, and thousands of employees - a cheap way to get into Space. It is true that NASA had gotten to space, but only at a ludicrous cost, and it had not improved its position for over two decades now.

It was amusing to see Burt Rutan calling NASA as Nay-Say when he first mentioned it. He clearly did not like NASA at all. It seemed to me that to him NASA was a giant road block that would not move away from the clear path for humans to space. (OK, I agree, this interpretation has a touch of my own view :D )

Mr. Rutan was a very good and engaging speaker. He easily won the crowd over. Burt Rutan spoke clearly, simply, concrete, straight forward, and with confidence. It was a pleasure to witness a man of his kind with my own eyes. It is not often that I get to see people who achieved as much as he did it. Reading news of his success on the Internet is like seeing an airplane fly far, far up in the sky, while seeing him in person is like seeing the might of an airplane within one's grasp.

I shall store this experience in my bank where I store the rest of the courage to face my own life. :)