SpaceShipOne designer to speak at University of Oregon

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Apr 25, 2005 by Justin Stranzl

Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer and the designer of SpaceShipOne, will present the 2005 Koehn Colloquium lecture for the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts today in Eugene.

The talk, Breakthroughs: The Product of Innovators, will explore the concept and benefits of thinking outside the box and questioning what is generally believed to be true.

The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. in Room 150 of Columbia Hall, 1215 E. 13th Ave.

Rutan is the winner of the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, a private foundation award meant to spur civilian spaceflight. The aerospace engineer believes space travel will in the future be available not only to professional astronauts but also to the rest of us.

Manned space flight is not only for the governments to do, Rutan said. It can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen employees.

In addition to SpaceShipOne, Rutan has designed the Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the world without refueling. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Scaled Composites, a Mojave, Calif., company.

Burt Rutan heads up the most progressive aerospace research company in the world, said Rob Thallon, an associate professor of architecture and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts' associate dean for administration. His enthusiasm inspires audiences for what individuals with vision can achieve.

Each Koehn Colloquium, funded by Michael and Stacy Koehn, is intended to offer School of Architecture and Allied Arts students a broad, cross-disciplinary perspective. Previous lecturers in the series include Stephen Greenblatt, who spoke in 1998, and Homi Bhabha, who spoke in 2001.