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| Science & Technology |
| Privately built and flown aircraft reached space 17 years before Bezos |
| 2021-07-25 |
| From a Facebook posting: Back in 2004, a guy named Brian Binnie flew this little rocket-powered beauty, basically built in Burt Rutan’s garage, into space. No computer controls, not even hydraulics…the control surfaces were connected to the joystick by cables and pulleys, like a WWI biplane. THIS was the first privately built aircraft to fly to space, twice within two weeks. So when Amazon man emerges from his ridiculously expensive toy that he had nothing to do with designing, building or flying (he even thanked all of us for paying for it), wearing a cowboy hat as if he some living-on-the-edge maverick who’s risking it all…well, I’ll tip my hat in respect to Brian. Great little documentary about Burt and the whole crew if anyone’s interested… |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #8 Mr. B a side note; "Aloha Wanderwell (Idris Galcia Hall née Welsh, October 13, 1906 – June 4, 1996) was a Canadian-American Internationalist explorer, author, filmmaker, and aviator. In the 1920s, while still a teenager, she traveled 380,000 miles across 80 countries, becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a Ford 1918 Model T. Beginning when she was just 16 years old, the journey took the five years 1922–1927 to complete." . |
| Posted by: Dale 2021-07-25 21:49 |
| #7 Thank you Mr. B. Inspiring. He overcame many detractors, I assure you. Like New Zealanders Burt Munro fastest Indian. |
| Posted by: Dale 2021-07-25 19:44 |
| #6 Always something inspiring and informative from you, badanov. Those bloody fools in their million dollar toys and teams of desperate techies. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2021-07-25 17:08 |
| #5 Salvage 1 |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2021-07-25 17:02 |
| #4 One of Rutan's sponsors was a guy named Richard Branson, soon to be of Virgin Galactic fame. So Rutan's legacy continues. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2021-07-25 14:39 |
| #3 Mr. Rutan’s Wikipedia page is fascinating (yes, Wikipedia does have its uses, however imperfect it most definitely is). His partnership with Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, is of long standing, and his work over the decades has been much honoured within the industry, including winning the first X Prize for this effort. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2021-07-25 13:56 |
| #2 What a great guy! |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2021-07-25 13:46 |
| #1 Very cool, Besoeker. Only remembered now are the lost Vineland settlement of Erik the Red and the apparently regular foraging trips across the Atlantic of the Medieval Irish monks, yet they led to Columbus and the colonization of the Americas. It’s important to remember the pioneers, even if they did not establish a permanent beachhead. Jeff Bezos did not do the research and development, but it was his interest and money that enabled this flight to happen — and considerably more cheaply and quickly than the U.S. government’s NASA, if possibly more expensively than Mr. Rutan’s project (we don’t know — Rutan’s project also had outside billionaire funding). Mr. Bezos earned the right to show his trust in the team that did the actual work by risking his life in the still experimental demonstration. Let us be glad he chose to spend some of his profits on helping us escape the planet of our birth instead of wholly on destroying our politics and society down here. And yes, every Amazon transaction did contribute in small part to enabling him to enable the scientists and engineers. I am as willing to accept credit for this participation as previous generations were to accept that by paying taxes they became partial owners of that “...one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind.” That Jeff Bezos expressed this awkwardly is no surprise, but does not change my part in the thing. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2021-07-25 13:44 |