New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | March 31, 2005

Ted Balaker goes to infinity and beyond with Ansari X-Prize winner Burt Rutan.

Comments

|3.31.05 @ 7:01PM|#

I always thought I would name my kid after Evil Knievel or Thomas Edison, but Knievel Edison Shultz doesn't have much of a ring to it.

...So Knievel Rutan Shultz it is!

This guy's amazing.

|3.31.05 @ 8:48PM|#

What happend to naming him "Bubba?"

|4.1.05 @ 2:34AM|#

Detachable Penis

|4.1.05 @ 12:45PM|#

I rather thought that Rutan would take a dimmer view of government regulation than this. If he's not happy with FAA regs, why doesn't he support private certification instead of trying to get the FAA to do a better job?

|4.1.05 @ 1:30PM|#

"I rather thought that Rutan would take a dimmer view of government regulation than this. If he's not happy with FAA regs, why doesn't he support private certification instead of trying to get the FAA to do a better job?"

I suspect it's because, in order to get up and running as quickly as possible, he needs the support of the bureaucrats he would have to publicly criticize...

...but I don't know.

|4.4.05 @ 3:50PM|#

We've asked for a research airplane?like environment while a developer is doing his research testing in order to allow innovation, allow the test to be run with efficiency. And then we actually are asking for more regulation than the new legislation edicts. We do feel that the FAA needs to be accepting or proving the safety of the ship as it pertains to the passengers that get flown. Whereas their focus has been on only protecting the non-involved public who live on the ground below. We think that the industry will prosper only if there is some acceptance of [responsibility for] the safety of the ship as it pertains to the passengers.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Nonetheless, I can think of two reasons off the top of my head why a major industry player such as Rutan would want mandatory government regulation rather than voluntary private certification:

1. Mandatory government regulation helps squash competition. Innovators who don't have the convenience of a sugar daddy such as Paul Allen will find the going in a heavily government regulated environment much harder to survive than someone who can just throw a pile of money in front of the regulation hurdle and climb over it.

2. Private certification would have to be funded privately. Government regulation socializes the cost so that the small change taxpayers are forced to subsidize the likes of Paul Allen.

I'm going to space. But I'm not going to give my money to this guy to get there- he's already busy picking my pocket.