Burt Rutan Quotes

Quotes about:

• When theres ever a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back and find a time period when the consensus was 'well, thats nonsense!', so what that means is that a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense.

  Burt Rutan

  Mean, Creative, Nonsense

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I believe that research, that you can claim that you're doing research only if half of the people, and I'm talking about half of the experts, believe that the goal is impossible.

  Burt Rutan

  Believe, Talking, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Everything looks nonsensical before it works.

  Burt Rutan

  Looks, Nonsensical

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• Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding

  Burt Rutan

  Understanding, Marketing, Testing Yourself

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• Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The smart people dont.

  Burt Rutan

  Smart, People, Breakthrough

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• A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense.

  Burt Rutan

  Research, Nonsense, Have Confidence

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• We didn't know the importance of home computers before the Internet. We had them mostly for fun, then the Internet came along and was enabled by all the PCs out there.

  Burt Rutan

  Fun, Home, Computer

  "Burt Rutan: Aesthete & Visionary Space Maverick" by Orion Jones, bigthink.com. 2017.

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• NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.

  Burt Rutan

  Risk, Innovation, Aversion

  "After the X Prize". www.wired.com. December 01, 2004.

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• Science is not about consensus, and consensus is not science.

  Burt Rutan

  Consensus

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• Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd.

  Burt Rutan

  Technology, Years, Space

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• The next 15 years will see thousands of people leave the atmosphere on suborbital flights. My company's SS2 system might fly 100,000 people by 2024. If it is shown to be highly profitable, perhaps we will see 20,000 people traveling to orbit by 2035, and then thousands to the moon by 2050. If we make a courageous decision, like the program we kicked off for Apollo, we will see our grandchildren in outposts on other planets.

  Burt Rutan

  Future, Grandchildren, Moon

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• I don't see anything beneficial about the US spending 100 billion dollars to go back to the moon unless we learn something new that will help us go to the moons of Saturn okay and so we ought to use that to breed new breakthroughs and to test new breakthroughs and to fund it.

  Burt Rutan

  Moon, Dollars, Use

  Source: bigthink.com

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• My study is NOT as a climatologist, but from a completely different perspective in
  which I am an expert … For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion - 'if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who's merits are dependent on complex experimental data, he is likely lying'. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit.

  Burt Rutan

  Lying, Airplane, Data

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• NASA is doing nothing but development. They're not doing research in manned spaceflight at all and I see no reason for them to do that because we already know that it will work and we already know exactly how it will work.

  Burt Rutan

  Research, Development, Doing Nothing

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

  Burt Rutan

  Space, Important, Reason

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• Achieving something that has never existed in manned spaceflight and that is high volume and public access.

  Burt Rutan

  Achieve, Volume, Spaceflight

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The Russians did much bigger space launch vehicles for launching satellites and for getting men in orbit. They did that much sooner than America because America was very good at something else.

  Burt Rutan

  Men, America, Space

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I like to call the difference between research and development. Some people use that interchangeably. They'll say R&D. They're two totally different things.

  Burt Rutan

  Research And Development, Two, Differences

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Airplanes were invented by natural selection. Now you can say that intelligent design designs our airplanes of today, but there was no intelligent design really designing those early airplanes. There were probably at least 30,000 different things tried, and when they crash and kill the pilot, don't try that again.

  Burt Rutan

  Airplane, Intelligent, Design

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• Look at the aerospace industry as it was just after the Kennedy talk. We were hiring like crazy. We were trying to get people graduated from college. Hey, you got to go to the program. We need you.

  Burt Rutan

  Crazy, College, Aerospace

  Source: bigthink.com

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• By 1931, after a few years' experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight?

  Burt Rutan

  Doors, Years, Space

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• I drove an electric car for seven years because of its advanced technology, not because I have any concerns about energy resources. I have none at all. And when environmentalists say that global warming is dangerous, unprecedented and that we'll have a tipping point for atmospheric carbon dioxide, it's just nonsense.

  Burt Rutan

  Technology, Years, Car

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• I was shocked to find that there were actually climate scientists who wouldn't share the raw data, but would only share their conclusions in summary graphs that were used to prove their various theories about planet warming. In fact I began to smell something really bad, and the worse that smell got, the deeper I looked.

  Burt Rutan

  Data, Smell, Climate

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• NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization.

  Burt Rutan

  Order, Should Have, Organization

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• Within 25 years, virtual reality meetings will be essentially transparent to being there in person. Once we can do this, the idea of climbing into an aircraft, and burning up huge quantities of fossil fuels to propel our bodies and briefcases full of papers, will seem absolutely backward.

  Burt Rutan

  Reality, Years, Ideas

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