Scaled Composites’ Rutan Leaving Antelope Valley

Rutan Just as the commercial space industry is getting revved up to take paying passengers into low-earth orbit, one of its pioneers prepares to say goodbye. Burt Rutan will retire as head of Scaled Composites, the company he founded in 1982 that went on to win the X-Prize for building a reusable space vehicle. Rutan, 67, was honored at the 39th Annual Business Outlook Conference in Lancaster on Feb. 18 with the Antelope Valley Board of Trade’s inaugural Navigating Change Award and the Business Person of the Year Award from the Antelope Valley Press. Speaking to the conference audience of more than 500 people, Rutan admitted he was never much of a businessman. How to motivate the people who worked for him was the most important lesson he learned and was how the value of Scaled Composites tripled during the recession, he said. “I didn’t do that by good business practices,” Rutan said. “We managed to do that by technical excellence and the passion our people have for the job.” With his retirement this spring, Rutan will leave the Antelope Valley and the desert town of Mojave, his home and workplace for more than 40 years. He is moving to an area just as remote – northern Idaho, not far from the border with Canada. In his years at the Mojave Air & Space Port, Rutan has contributed greatly to the airport’s reputation as a center of innovation and creativity in human flight. After working as a flight test project engineer at Edwards Air Force Base and a short stint at an aircraft company in Kansas, Rutan landed permanently in Mojave first with the Rutan Aircraft Factory, which made the parts for small, home-built planes, and then Scaled Composites. In operating his company, Rutan stuck to a few principles – have no debt; make costs as low as possible; and spend every minute motivating the staff to have fun. There was a time when Rutan was ready to give up on California because he was unhappy with the business climate. He then created his own environment in which to succeed, one based on technical excellence in the aircraft he designed. The Voyager Among that aircraft is the Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan, Burt’s brother, in an around the world flight that required no refueling. In 2004, SpaceShipOne took to the skies more than 320,000 feet above Mojave twice in a two-week period to win the $10 million X-Prize. Its successor vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, is the prototype for a manned space vehicle for Virgin Galactic to take passengers up to sub-orbital altitudes. The space port is also home to another X-Prize winner, Masten Space Systems, which successfully demonstrated its lunar landing vehicle; and XCOR Aerospace whose Lynx two-seat vehicle is bound for space. While aerospace makes up a smaller percentage of jobs in the Antelope Valley than during its heyday of the Cold War, the industry remains a cornerstone of the economy. Edwards Air Force Base is the largest employer in the valley with a military and civilian workforce of 10,000, with Plant 42 in Palmdale, where major aerospace firms like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are located, employing more than 7,000 workers. Scaled Composites is the largest employer at the spaceport with nearly 400 workers. Northrop became owner of the company in 2007. Future of funding The strong military foundation and the research and development by the prime aerospace manufacturers of new types of aircraft that keep the U.S. and its allies ahead of the curve should keep the federal dollars flowing and make the region less susceptible to cuts in federal spending, said Brad Kemp, director of regional research for Beacon Economics, during a presentation on the national and local economy. Northrop Grumman, for example, builds its drone, the Global Hawk, in Palmdale. The Global Observer, one of the largest unmanned aircraft developed, has been tested at Edwards, as has the X-51, a hypersonic air-breathing propulsion system developed by Boeing Co. The importance of funding for new types of aircraft was a key part of the remarks by Stu Witt, the general manager of the Mojave Air & Space Port. What is missing at the national level in the budget for the space program – clear, focused, and predictable funding – can be found at Mojave, where entrepreneurs develop and test rockets and vehicles to reach low-orbit altitudes, Witt said. “It’s good business for our region and it’s what America needs,” Witt said.