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What are the Awards? Award Categories Winners / Finalists Selection Process Educational Programs White House How to Participate Press Information Acknowledgments
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2004 Product Design Award Finalist
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Burt Rutan Photography: Courtesy of Scaled Composites
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Burt Rutan has been fascinated with constructing aircraft from his own designs since his childhood. In 1982, he founded his California-based aircraft design, tooling, fabrication, and static-testing company, Scaled Composites. Past projects include a single-place, twin-jet demonstrator for Fairchild Republic Company; a tandem-wing, three-surface technology demonstration aircraft for DARPA; and three NASA X-38 Crew Return Vehicle structures. Currently, Scaled Composites flies the high-altitude and long-endurance aircraft Proteus, which holds both the U.S. and world records for flying at 65,000 feet. The firm's latest flying prototypes are the White Knight and SpaceShipOne; current plans include an attempt to take three people to the edge of space (60 miles/100 km) in these vehicles this year. Rutan has also recently begun flight-testing the GlobalFlyer, which is a single-plane, single-turbofan aircraft designed to circumnavigate the earth, unfueled.
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