- He's an aerospace engineer,
noted for designing light, strong, unusual looking,
energy efficient aircrafts.
He designed the record breaking Voyager,
which was the first plane to fly around the world
without stopping or refueling.
He designed the first privately funded space craft
to enter space twice within a two week period.
He's Burt Rutan and here are his top ten rules for success.
- [Burt] Someone ask him what's the most difficult thing
about going to the moon.
- [Man] Copy.
- And then he says the will to do it.
The engineering is just calculations
but the decision and the will and the courage
to try to do it, is the most difficult hurdle.
- [Man] (mumbles) 105
- We are known for trying new things,
even though we have a tough schedule.
We did an airplane that the customer wanted it flying within
I think it was eight and a half months
and we elected on our own
to try a totally new manufacturing method
for the wings and tail services and control services.
Something that hadn't been done before.
Something that may not work.
Something that was really exciting and interesting
and if it did work, it's breakthrough stuff.
Our first astronaut, Alan Shepard,
who flew a sub-orbinal flight
followed Gagarin by only three weeks.
After Shepard's flight, it took only seven and a half years
for us to launch Apollo 8 to go out and orbit the moon.
They went to the moon on the very first man flight
of the big Saturn 5.
Now can you imagine today,
NASA developing a brand new, huge, big advanced rocket
and the first time people fly on it,
they go to the moon
or they go somewhere we've never been before.
That puts in perspective the kind of risks that we,
that we were taking
and those who put themselves in a position
to take enormous risks are those that have breakthroughs
and those that have research results.
I believe that confidence in nonsense is a major factor
and the reason is, think of the most important breakthrough
that you can think of.
Go back before it was recognized as a breakthrough
and the populous normally would consider,
well that's nonsense.
That's nonsensical.
Now all of a sudden when it really is
recognized as a true breakthrough then of course,
oh yeah, that's really cool.
But what people forget is it's nonsense before.
And what that means,
that's why the weird folk have the breakthroughs
because they have confidence in nonsense.
If it's nonsensical and you say,
well I'm not going to try to do that,
it doesn't make sense,
you're not going to have a breakthrough.
The guy who is silly enough to think that
Hey I'll try that even though it's nonsense,
he's the guy that's going to have the breakthrough.
So, try things that you don't think will work.
If you think they'll work, you're not doing research anyway.
You're going to have failures if you try hard stuff.
If you go out and try to build a, a better seaplane
and your goal is to go 12 knots faster,
you're probably not going to fail.
You may fail because it only goes four knots faster
but it's not going to be a disaster failure.
But if you go out and try something
that is, Holy crap, can you really do that?
And it fails, it is a failure.
And I feel very strongly that it's not good enough
for us to have generations of kids
that think that it's okay to look forward
to a better version of a cellphone with a video in it.
They need to look forward to exploration.
They need to look forward to colonization.
They need to look forward to breakthroughs.
They need to.
We need to inspire them because they need to lead us
and help us survive in the future.
What I try to encourage people to do
is to have a breakthrough by finding a way
to do it more simply.
And even if the real simple one has a chance of not working
because it's too simple, well try it anyway.
Because in trying it,
sometimes you'll stumble unto a solution
on why it wouldn't work
and now you've really had a big gain.
Now you have a simple thing that does work
and that's the real challenge now.
You can always make something work by adding complexity
but you can never make something affordable
by adding complexity.
I think breakthroughs occur not when everybody's doing fine
and when your priority is to make everyone equally happy,
you don't have breakthroughs then.
That's monotony and that can lead to monotony
and it can lead, even to your ability to survive.
But you have breakthroughs either during or after crises,
when you have really bad times.
We're creative when we're threatened.
I think the world of aviation
will gain from me mostly inspiration.
The fact that a few people
literally in a garage or a small shop built an airplane
that doubled and absolute distance record,
flew all the way around the world,
flew through all this weather and came back home safely,
the fact that that was done all composite
without mixing metals
without solving all these stupid problems
that the engineers make for themselves,
that will provide the inspiration,
that my God, it can be done.
We're going to do it.
We'll stick our necks out.
I knew how the Wright brothers felt
when they came upon these things
and had success.
We decided, this is the best way to pun this.
What's one thing
and that was the passion that I saw in your eyes
for the outcome.
And I knew that you would stick with it
because I knew that passion was genuine.
When you go out and look to venture capital
or look to whatever,
you're looking for people who have a passion for money.
But you have a passion for stage flight
and I think that's the difference between
- Excuse me.
(audience laughs)
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Jeremiah Omara asked me to,
so if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below
and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know
which of Burt Rutan's top ten rules for success
you love the most.
Leave it in the comments
and I'm going to join the discussion.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Continue to believe and I'll see you soon.