Sept. 29, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Teresa Hendrix
Public Affairs
(805) 756-7266

Media Advisory: Burt Rutan Got His Educational Start at Cal Poly

To: News, science, higher education, engineering and feature writers and editors
From: Cal Poly -- California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California
Re: SpaceShipOne designer, Voyager designer Burt Rutan

If you are working on biography stories or feature stories about aeronautical design pioneer Burt Rutan, you may want to mention Rutan is a graduate of Cal Poly’s nationally-recognized College of Engineering.

Burt Rutan graduated from Cal Poly in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering. His Senior Project won the national student paper competition of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics that year. Rutan was awarded Cal Poly's first honorary doctorate in 1987.

Rutan's SpaceShipOne made history again this morning (Sept. 29) attaining a height of 67 miles during a flight over the Mojave Desert. Piloted by Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne again landed safely.

Watch the launch on the Ansari X-Prize Web site:http://web1-xprize.primary.net/launch.php
Read about it in the Los Angeles Times.

In its maiden spaceflight n June 2004, the craft landed safely in the Mojave Desert after flying into space, reaching an altitude of 62.5 miles.

Rutan has partnered with Microsoft's Paul Allen to create the first private aircraft to travel into space in
a quest to claim the $10 million prize in the Ansari X-Flight competition. This week, British billionaire Richard Branson announced plans to buy a fleet of Rutan's aircraft to begin offering commercial flights to the edge of space.

During future SpaceShipOne stories, Cal Poly graduate Peter Siebold is also one of three designated SpaceShipOne test pilots. Siebold is an aeronautical engineer, experimental test pilot, and flight test engineer at Scaled Composites, LLC, Rutan’s company. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly.

Rutan's quest into space has been featured this year in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and Associated Press.

Mr. Rutan has been written about in the San Luis ObispoTribune, profiled on BBC News, and was the subject of a feature profile by the Associated Press, carried in many newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the San Jose Mercury News June 23. He is also profiled in the October edition of the New Yorker magazine.

More Information about Cal Poly:
http://www.calpoly.edu/simplythebest/simplythebest.html

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Cal Poly as the nation’s top public undergraduate university in the west for 11 consecutive years. The magazine has ranked Cal Poly's College of Engineering (CENG) as the top public undergraduate engineering program in the nation at a nondoctoral
school. More Information about Cal Poly’s College of Engineering:
http://ceng-web.calpoly.edu/about/highlights.php

More Information about SpaceShipOne:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm

More Information on the Ansari X-Prize
http://web1-xprize.primary.net/launch.php

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