Burt Rutan has released the following statement:
To my friends in the Press…
Since the WSJ chose to cherry-pick and miss-quote my comments to Cong
Wolf and since the blogs have taken that to further mischaracterized my
comments, I am forwarding the Wolf memo in its entirety, in the hopes
that some of this gets corrected. Some additional clarification of my thoughts follow:
My basic concern is that the real value of NASA’s contributions that
America realized in the 60s and early 70s is now being completely
discarded. How can we rationalize a surrender of our preeminence in
human spaceflight? In my mind, the important NASA accomplishments are
twofold: 1) The technical breakthroughs achieved by basic research (not
by Development programs like Constellation) and 2) The Forefront Manned
Exploration that provided the inspiration for our youth to plan careers
in engineering/science and that established the U.S. as the world leader
in technology.
In short, it is a good idea indeed for the commercial community to
compete to re-supply the ISS and to bring about space access for the
public to enjoy. I applaud the efforts of SpaceX, Virgin and Orbital in
that regard and feel these activities should have been done at least two
decades ago. However, I do not see the commercial companies taking
Americans to Mars or to the moons of Saturn within my lifetime and I
doubt if they will take the true Research risks (technical and
financial) to fly new concepts that have low confidence of return on
investment. Even NASA, regarded as our prime Research agency has not
recently shown a willingness to fly true Research concepts.
For years I have stated that a NASA return-to-moon effort must include
true Research content, i.e. testing new concepts needed to enable
forefront Exploration beyond the moon. The current Ares/Orion does not
do that. While I have been critical of Constellation for that reason, I
do not think that NASA should ‘give up’ on manned spaceflight, just that
they should be doing it while meeting the 1) or 2) criteria above.
Some have guessed that my recent comments are based on my overall
displeasure with the Obama Administration. they are not; however it does
seem that the best technical minds in U.S. industry are still striving
to find HOW America can continue to be “exceptional”, while the
Administration does not want America to BE “exceptional”.
Burt Rutan
Rutan has not forwarded the Congressman Frank Wolf “memo” as he calls it or letter as its referred to elsewhere. Hyperbola was sent a copy of it by a third party a few days ago but due to concerns about possible privacy implications this blog is not publishing it for now
