Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1212069
82 I-CONNECT007 I REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2020 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE Burt Rutan's Keynote: SpaceShipOne by Pete Starkey I-CONNECT007 Introduced by IPC president John Mitchell, IPC APEX Expo 2020 keynote speaker Burt Rutan addressed the attentive audience in a full-to-standing-room-only ballroom at the San Diego Convention Center in the friendly and relaxed style of a benevolent uncle with mut- ton-chop whiskers. "I'm an old man; I devel- oped airplanes with a slide rule. The invention of the floppy disc was a revolution!" Rutan, clearly a courageous idealist with a passion for the advancement of technology, enthusiastically shared his experience and his vision in his keynote presentation "Space- ShipOne: A New Era in Commercial Space Travel and the New Race for Space." During the following hour-and-a-half, he gave a struc- tured account of his time at college, his first job, his ideas on inspiration for innovation, his research companies, the two "big flights," managing innovators, his predictions, the four Space Billionaires, urban air transport, cars without drivers and planes without pilots, concluding with the lessons he had learned. Looking back over his early career, Rutan had wanted to design aircraft ever since his first job as a flight test engineer in 1965. In his opinion, the beginnings of aviation air- craft design had been by natural selection, and "every aircraft was stealth before we invented radar." He further discussed the foundation of his two research companies in the mid-1970s: the Rutan Aircraft Factory to develop light air- craft and market technical and educational documents, and Scaled Composites to develop