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Hello Mr. Rutan, you've had a lot of experience designing planes.

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Could you please show us one of your unique designs?

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Oh sure, I love to talk about airplanes.

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I've designed some 28 different manned airplanes and also some unmanned airplanes.

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One of my favorites is the Boomerang that I'm sitting in.

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It is a very safe, long range, light twin airplane and it's the airplane that I fly

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nowadays.

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Behind me is the Proteus, a high altitude airplane that's used for special missions.

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Probably my most famous airplane though is the Voyager.

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The Voyager, about 16 years ago, took off at one airport and flew completely around

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the world, taking some nine days, and landed at the same airport without refueling.

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And that set a milestone in aviation.

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Do you have to use your imagination to design these planes?

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Oh yes, imagination is extremely important because with an airplane you can look at birds,

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you can look at other airplanes, but if you're going to do anything truly new, you have to

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create, you have to innovate, and you have to imagine.

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Here we are in the office, and this is where airplanes are designed.

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It starts with a sketch, and a sketch comes from the mind, it comes from, really from

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your imagination.

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You imagine what might fly well, and you think about it real hard, and you take a pencil

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to a piece of paper, and you put on a piece of paper the creative thoughts that are in

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your mind, and that's what imagination is really all about.

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Can you show us the Proteus?

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Okay, this is Proteus, pretty big airplane.

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It's designed to do some very interesting things.

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It can fly very high, it can fly more than 10 miles high, so it's up above where the

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airliners fly, and it can stay up there a long time, and that's very useful for doing

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things like studying the atmosphere, or relaying internet data, that sort of thing.

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So let's take a look at it.

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Even though this is a very big airplane, with a wingspan of about 90 feet, it's actually

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quite light.

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It only weighs as much as two cars, but if you fill it up with fuel, it weighs as much

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as four cars.

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The wings are very long and slender, very smooth, and that's necessary so the airplane

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can fly a long time.

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The wings are filled with fuel, and the fuel drains down and is pumped up to jet engines,

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and jet engines is what makes the thrust that makes the airplane climb, makes it fly, makes

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it stay up there.

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And thrust is a very, very important thing for airplanes, and thrust will help you win

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this contest.