World-renowned engineer and designer Burt Rutan will visit the University today and Tuesday as part of a lecture and workshop
series sponsored by the School of Architecture & Allied Arts.
Rutan, most famous for his recent work designing and creating the world’s first privately built, manned spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, will speak at the University tonight as part of the Koehn Colloquium lecture series. The 7 p.m. lecture, titled “Breakthroughs: The Product of Innovators,” is free to the public and will take place in 150 Columbia.
“The colloquium is the third in a series to get distinguished people on campus,” said Rob Thallon, A&AA associate dean for administration. He added that the colloquium’s sponsors, Michael and Stacy Koehn, wanted to bring people to the school who are outside of the school’s disciplines.
Thallon said the Koehns want people who will “shake things up” in the department.
Rutan is president and CEO of Scaled Composites, based in Mojave, Calif. His team’s design and flight of SpaceShipOne won the $10 million X-Prize for making two flights into space within 14 days in October.
Additionally, Rutan was involved in the design of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which on March 3 was the first manned aircraft to fly around the world without refueling. He also designed Voyager, the first aircraft to fly nonstop around the world, in 1987.
Rutan will stay on campus for three hours Tuesday to help a team of architects and engineers create a working model of a pedal-powered portable generator. Thallon said the project was submitted by the Ecological Design Center and the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Living and was chosen by Rutan from approximately 16 different ideas.
— Sheldon Traver