A salute to innovation
With all the brouhaha over the outsourcing of engineering jobs, it bears repeating that the true engine of commerce is innovation, and American engineers have plenty of it. An excellent example can be found in the person of Burt Rutan, whose company, Scaled Composites (Mojave, CA, www.scaled.com), is the frontrunner in the X-prize competition, an international race for a $10 million purse. The prize will be awarded to the first team to take three people to an altitude of 100 km (about 62 miles) and return with the same vehicle twice within a two-week period.
Those who say that the American engineer is an endangered species should take a look at what engineers at Scaled Composites are accomplishing today.
Rutan's effort uses a binary system consisting of a carrier aircraft called the White Knight coupled to a small suborbital vehicle called the SpaceShipOne (SS1). On December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight, the SS1 became the first private aircraft to break the speed of sound, and on May 13, it achieved a speed of Mach 2.5 and an apogee of 211,400 ft (about 40 miles, only 20 short of the goal.)
This isn't the first time Rutan has made aviation history. In December 1986, his Voyager aircraft left and returned to its starting point at Mojave, CA, completing a 25,000-mile flight in 216 hours. It was a nonstop and unrefueled around-the-world flight�the first in history.
Rutan's latest effort is only an example of what can be done by a group of dedicated engineers. Technology has progressed to a point where the tools of development�once so expensive, cumbersome, and complex that only a large organization could own them�can now be owned (or rented) by a small group, or even a single individual.
Graham Tanaka addresses this point in his recent book, Digital Deflation (http://digitaldeflation.com). He says that technology advancements and productivity gains will fuel the next economic recovery. Engineers play a key role in his argument that innovation, new products, and market development power our economy.
Well-engineered products of high quality will always have a market, and will always require talented and dedicated designers to create them. By leveraging technology force-multipliers such as the Internet, improved design tools, and improved design support services, a small group of engineers can reach for the stars in a figurative sense, just as Burt Rutan has done literally.
Alix L. Paultre
Executive Editor
alixp@electronicproducts.com
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