Burt Rutan is the 2015 winner of the National Aeronautic Association’s Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy. The trophy is awarded annually to a living American for “significant public service of enduring value to aviation in the United States.” It’s the latest in a long list of awards for the prolific aircraft designer, who retired from Scaled Composites in 2011. It was at Scaled, based in Mojave, California, that the designs from his fertile brain took form and created aircraft that challenged convention and led to some significant aviation developments, including the first private suborbital space flight.
Rutan has been anything but retired since leaving Scaled. He’s designed a flying car (which hasn’t flown) and is working on a multi-purpose aircraft called the SkiGull, which can apparently land on any reasonably flat surface and has a 2500-mile range. He’s also working with Microsoft co-founder and aviation enthusiast Paul Allen on Stratolaunch, a high-altitude launch platform for spacecraft.
