Thursday 23 October 2008

Reaching for the stars.

Looking at the Bloodhound SSC team and their aim to far exceed their previous achievements it got me thinking about presentation that one of my fathers heroes Burt Rutan gave at TED.

It was based around human ambition to go further, higher and faster and the current climate in which things like the US space program has stagnated. i.e. NASA is still flying the Space Shuttle which is now 17 years old and are now considering retiring it and shifting their launch approach to the early space race days of multistage rockets. The Concorde has been scrapped and long distance air travel is still taking place at the same speed as it was in the 1950s. The SR71 Blackbird introduced in 1966 was flown through to 1998 and since then there has not been a military aircraft to even approach its performance.

His point is that the early days of 'reaching for the stars' by governments has gone and now it is down to private enterprise to push development, something that he led by example with his Ansari X-Prize entry - Spaceship One

If you have 20 minutes watch this video. Burt Rutan is one of these people that speaks from a perspective of practicing what he preaches. In my opinion it's worth the look.

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