Three Cheers for Rutan

I must depart from my usual cynicism to note the incredible accomplishment of Burt Rutan and his team for achieving that critical "first small step" into space without government assistance.

I was involved in an earlier effort to attempt to "get off the mudball and live forever". It was 20 years ago that the fifty-two foot Dolphin rocket that we built was successfully launched out of the Pacific Ocean near California. That was the first successful launch in the history of the world of a rocket developed and built entirely with private funds and without government involvement.

It was suborbital and didn’t carry any passengers. But it was a magnificent success.

Unfortunately, although the rocket went up, the company went down. It took us over $10 million to get to that point and, although we had three more rockets on the assembly line and plans for orbital capability ... we couldn’t achieve additional funding to get us there.

I’m sorry it took 20 years for someone to make it farther than we did.

But I am delighted that someone finally did.