Rutan Says Space Should Be "Fun"

[Tuckerfan]

I hate to say it, but, thank you Captain Obvious.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan kicked off the 24th International Space Development Conference here today with an exuberant, yet pointed presentation chiding NASA and the nation’s aerospace industry for not working hard enough to excite the next generation of space explorers and resting on the laurels of past successes and ideas.

At the conference, put on by the National Space Society (NSS), Rutan was awarded for his work and the success in 2004 of his SpaceShipOne project. Last June, Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites, successfully launched the first privately financed and built sub-orbital spacecraft, SpaceShipOne.

Rutan was presented with the NSS’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Award. The trophy, which includes replicas of von Braun’s earliest spaceship designs, was presented to Rutan by Konrad Dannenberg, a former Apollo Program Propulsion expert for NASA, as well as one of the only few remaining members of von Braun’s rocket-building team.

In accepting the award, Rutan launched into a criticism of the nation’s current state of spaceflight, apologizing to the audience beforehand lest he insult employees of NASA or prime aerospace industry employees.

“I’m absolutely embarrassed that the average age of those people who have left the atmosphere are as old as I am,” Rutan, 61, told the 300-plus audience. “That is totally wrong.”