on aircraft and craft
DESCRIPTION
On December 14, 1986, a bizarre-looking aircraft so laden with fuel that its wingtips dragged on the runway took off from an airport in the Mojave Desert. It landed nine days later, becoming the first plane to circle the globe nonstop without refueling. That plane was designed by Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer who would go on to design SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the world’s first manned commercial spacecraft. Having designed nearly four hundred unique aircraft, Rutan’s bold configurations stand out in an engineering practice that is necessarily shaped by the unforgiving science of flight. Despite these constraints, it has been Rutan’s self-imposed principles that give him the freedom, experience, and courage necessary to excel in his craft. Encoded into the shape of Rutan’s aircraft are a series of convictions, and a clear point of view emerges when you consider his body of work not as isolated designs, but as a connected ecosystem. This talk will discuss these self-referential connections, and how they can inform the way we think about our own design experience.TRANSCRIPT
On Aircraft and CraftInteraction 13 Conference, Toronto, CanadaJanuary 30, 2013
Dane Petersen@thegreatsunra#onaircraft
Image Credit: Creative Commons
Image Credit: Creative Commons
Image Credit: Creative Commons
Image Credit: Instagram
Image Credit: Creative Commons
Image Credit: Creative Commons by Dave Malkoff
Image Credits: Creative Commons and Scaled Composites
367 Unique Aircraft Designs
367 Unique Aircraft Designs
47 First Flights
Lightweight, efficient aircraft.
design #76rutan voyager1986
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18 Years Later…
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designs 318 & 316white knight & spaceshipone2004
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1968
design #27rutan variviggen1972
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design #33 rutan vari-eze1975
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Image Credit: Creative Commons
design #76rutan voyager1986
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design #281proteus1998
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Image Credit: Creative Commons
nasa x-38 prototype1999
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Image Credit: Creative Commons
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
design #316spaceshipone2004
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
design #318white knight2004
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
Image Credit: Scaled Composites
Image Credit: Copyright Mike Massee & Courtesy of Scaled Composites
36 Years
Rutan spent his entire career riffing on a core set of design principles.
Rutan spent his entire career riffing on a core set of design principles.
Rather than allowing the constraints of his design medium to define his craft…
Rutan spent his entire career riffing on a core set of design principles.
Rather than allowing the constraints of his design medium to define his craft…
Rutan’s principles defined his craft.
You are a mashup of your design experience.
You are a mashup of your design experience.
The focus of your expertise is your craft.
You are a mashup of your design experience.
The focus of your expertise is your craft.
You construct the narrative of your craft.
Thank you.
@thegreatsunra