Spacemen

The glasses clink, and conversation turns to the golf match. "Tell me," says Smith. "Do you think my opponent is ready?"

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Rutan is nothing if not ready. He is arguably the greatest living aeronautical engineer, and even at 65, his most fertile period may well be ahead of him. In a dramatic news conference of his own just days earlier, Rutan unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, the gleaming aircraft that will launch a spaceship from between its double fuselage and enable Virgin Atlantic president Richard Branson -- Rutan's partner, along with billionaire Paul Allen -- to establish the world's first commercial space tourism business, Virgin Galactic.

The short-term goal, starting with flights next fall, is to carry Earthlings to the edge of space, where they will experience weightlessness for four minutes -- at a cost of $50,000 per minute, considering the "space fare" of $200,000 a pop. The 20-year plan is somewhat more ambitious: to put a "luxury resort," as Rutan calls it, into orbit around the Moon.

Rutan is quite confident this will happen. He has built his career on being confident. Confidence -- and a quirky genius that seemingly knows no bounds -- enabled Rutan to design an odd-looking plane that circumnavigated the globe in 1986 without refueling. That aircraft, the Voyager, hangs in the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall, and so does SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded craft to fly into space. SpaceShipOne and a later iteration of the Voyager, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, have made Rutan the only repeat winner of the Collier Trophy, the coveted award issued annually by the U.S. National Aeronautics Association.

Rutan occupies a unique position in the aeronautics community, namely, at the top. He's the Tiger Woods of aviation, so talented and accomplished that, well, some people just can't help disliking him. Rutan himself remains refreshingly unaware of this. "I don't think I've ever had any genuine criticism," he told me recently, allowing that his calling the future passengers on Virgin Galactic "astronauts" drew fire from actual, NASA-approved astronauts.

At the WhiteKnightTwo unveiling, attended by Branson and moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, among other luminaries, one of Rutan's managers extolled the unusual harmony among employees of his spaceship manufacturing company, Scaled Composites. One reason for the esprit de corps, the manager theorized, is Scaled's method for handling on-the-job complaints, namely, making workers express their beef by writing it down as haiku and presenting it to their manager. The practice has a way of quickly putting petty concerns to rest.

Smith laughs when he hears this. He is also amused when he's told that Rutan is very competitive about golf. "He'll be very upset when I whup his ass," Smith says. "He'll be writing haiku like nobody's business: 'Haiku, and [expletive] you,' a very short one."

He sips his champagne and laughs a little more. "This will be an interesting match," he says.

Visiting Rutan at what he calls his "Golf Shack," in the exclusive, expansive PGA West golf community in La Quinta, Calif., is like going to see your eccentric, affable, golf-obsessed uncle -- if your uncle had a trophy case full of aviation awards. Rutan's wife, Tonya, is a diminutive, very fit woman with a preternaturally upbeat attitude. She's 15 years Rutan's junior and his fourth wife, and Rutan makes it clear, frequently and pointedly, that he appreciates her trim figure. Tonya doesn't mind that at all.

In fact, Tonya says that she and Burt, who's handsome and has an aging rock star quality about him, enjoyed a mutual "animal attraction" when they met on a blind date 16 years ago. They still seem to enjoy that attraction. Burt says the only things he really cares about in life are "golf, sex, and airplanes," and on the wall of his office at the Golf Shack hangs a large, soft-focus photo of Tonya, a former real estate agent and now a writer, wearing a cowgirl hat and a T-shirt cropped very, very short.

Tonya's energy and enthusiasm are not limited to posing for sexy photos. She frequently says, "Ooooh, that's great!" In fact, she says it now, as Smith -- who has just arrived -- unfurls two autographed posters, gifts for Rutan, showing crystal-clear images of the surface of Mars captured by cameras on the Phoenix lander. The posters lie on the kitchen counter in the Rutans' expansive three-bedroom home. The big rear windows, overlooking the backyard plunge pool and hot tub, display a panorama of the golf course and craggy desert mountains in the distance. Gazing down at one of the photographs, Rutan uses his hands to frame a portion of the surface of Mars. "Now, that's about the ugliest thing you'd want to look at, isn't it?" he asks, quickly looking up to gauge Smith's reaction.

Rutan, who clearly understands the value of exploring Mars, is just yanking his soon-to-be opponent's chain, but Smith seems taken aback.