Part of a recent talk by Craig Barrett, Chairman of the board of Directors of the Intel Corporation.

----- Barrett concludes with his impression of a visit with Burt Rutan of Rutan Aircraft Factory Inc., the company that designed the Spaceship One, winner of the X-Prize, to make a plea for the project he will be working on following his retirement – improving education.“The government tends to operate from the standpoint of ‘let’s take no risks,’” Rutan said, talking about today’s U.S. space program. “That puts you into a spot where you make no breakthroughs.”

But in the next 10 years, or 14 at the most, he said, companies in every country will build spaceships and will make innovations and breakthroughs and that will inspire the children around the world.

“We have been boring our kids with no progress on space travel,” he said. “We can’t afford to bore our children.”

Inspiring children and improving education will be one of Barrett’s primary projects going forward as chairman of Intel.

“The biggest ticking time bomb here in U.S. is the sorry state of our education system,” he said.  “And other countries are starting to reach parity with our university system.”