Before Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had space programs, there was this guy who was building rockets in his backyard. Saratoga, 1980s. Robert Truax was a rocket engineer and inventor best known for his pioneering work in both military rocketry and the early private spaceflight movement. He played a... significant role in U.S. Navy missile programs and after retiring from the Navy, he founded his own company, Truax Engineering. By doing things differently and avoiding what he called ‘government waste,’ he believed space travel had become too expensive and bureaucratic under government control, and that simpler, reusable rockets could be built more efficiently by individuals or private companies. He remained a vocal advocate for commercial spaceflight throughout the 1980s and 1990s, years before companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin made such ideas mainstream. In the 1980s, he launched Project Private Enterprise, an ambitious attempt to send a human into space using a privately developed rocket. The centerpiece of this effort was the X-3 Volksrocket, a low-cost, reusable vehicle designed to democratize space access. Although his private rockets never reached orbit, Robert Truax is remembered as a visionary and a determined ‘garage engineer’ who challenged the status quo of space exploration. His efforts helped lay the philosophical foundation for today’s commercial space industry, paving the way for innovators like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, whose companies have turned private spaceflight into a reality. Truax remains an important, if often overlooked, figure in the history of rocketry. RIP Robert Truax (September 3, 1917 – September 17, 2010). source footage 🎥: MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour | NBC | Video Westshow more

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