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Burt Rutan, aviator
On most days, Burt Rutan’s head is in the clouds — and sometimes, beyond.
An innovative American aviator who would make Charles Lindbergh proud, Rutan is the $10 million winner of the Ansari X Prize for putting a private ship into space twice within two weeks. Last October, Rutan’s team put SpaceShipOne in space for the second time within five days of the first launch, reaching a height of 72 miles above the Earth’s surface. Rutan also was the brains behind Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping, in 1986.
Since graduating from California Polytechnic University in 1965, Rutan has had a long career of successfully mastering the science of aeronautics. His design of the Boomerang jet envisioned an aircraft that could fly straight despite an asymmetrical design. He’s won such awards as the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, the British Gold Medal for Aeronautics and the Presidential Citizen’s Medal.
No wonder the game of golf — with all its equipment and gadgets — appeals to such an inventor. His putter, dubbed “The Titanic” because when he putts he wants to “think about sinking,” is another one of his impressive original designs. The head looks more like an aircraft than it does a putter. The Titanic, which notched him a 55-foot net-eagle putt on this day, is designed so that it is perfectly balanced when turned in any direction. The putter allows Rutan to use the “highest possible moment of inertia.”
“What I aimed at was a shaft-balance putter, not just face-balanced. If you turn the putter in any direction, it’s balanced along the shaft,” Rutan explains. “Other guys who talk about low/high moment of inertia are making small models — this is the highest possible within the rules.”
So will the inventor/aviator one day become the next great golf club designer?
“It’s just for fun — and I’m not about to start working on drivers.”
— Seth Jones, associate editor
"I’ve been playing golf since the 1950s. Most of my life I played just a handful of times a year at a 27-handicap. But starting in 1998 when I had a very mild heart attack, I decided to do the best I can with golf, which would force me to get outside and exercise and walk. So I brought it from a 27 down to a 9 or a 10. People love this game because it’s deceivingly difficult, and yet so much fun when you hit an occasional nice shot. And, I mean — look at this course! I work 60 or 70 hours a week with my job. I enjoy golf so much now that it’s all that I do besides the airplanes and spaceships and things. I don’t do anything else — just golf or developing airplanes and spaceships." — Burt Rutan |
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