Burt Rutan on the Future of Space Flight
Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites and winner of the Ansari X-Price in 2004, presented an inspiring lecture at TED in October of 2006. Recently four workers at Scaled Composites were killed while working on a top-secret suborbital spaceship for Virgin Galactic. This a tragic event and a sobering reminder of the costs of scientific experimentation.
I'm hopeful that this event will be investigated closely so that safety precautions can be developed and that it does not significantly derail efforts to fund these types of initiatives.
