Time Magazine To Name SpaceShipOne "Invention Of The Year"

2004 has been very, very good to Burt Rutan.

His homebuilt spaceship flew into space not just once, but three times... coming home safely each time (but not without a few moments of "maximum pucker"), he made a deal to build the first generation of space touring vessels, he got to play in Zero Gravity aboard Zero G Corp's "G-Force One" (shown below), and he's been lauded far and wide for bring the excitement back into the space age. Now... he's getting one more, albeit VERY influential, feather in his cap. Time Magazine will be naming SpaceShipOne 2004 Invention of the Year by Time magazine in its annual Coolest Inventions issue. The issue carries a picture of Rutan and SpaceShipOne on the cover, and should be on newsstands later today (Monday).

Time's San Francisco bureau chief, Chris Taylor, applauded the SpaceShipOne team, "For solving the problems of suborbital flight and re-entry with ingenious design, for boldly going where NASA now fears to tread and returning without a scratch, but most of all for reigniting the moon-shot-era dream of zero-gravity for everyone, SpaceShipOne is Time's Coolest Invention of 2004."

FMI: www.scaled.com, www.nogravity.com