Aerotech News and Review, Oct 19 2018

Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist Paul Allen dies
by Phuong Le
Associated Press
Paul G. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates before be- coming a billionaire philanthropist who invested in conservation, space travel, arts and culture and professional sports, died Oct. 15. He was 65.
He died in Seattle from complications of non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his company, Vulcan Inc., announced.
Gates said he was heartbroken about the loss of one of his “oldest and dearest friends.”
“Personal computing would not have existed without him,” Gates said in a statement.
“But Paul wasn’t content with starting one company. He channeled his intellect and com- passion into a second act focused on improving people’s lives and strengthening communities in Seattle and around the world. He was fond of saying, ‘If it has the potential to do good, then we should do it,’” Gates wrote.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called Allen’s contributions to the company, community and industry “indispensable.”
“As co-founder of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Nadella wrote on Twitter.
Allen, an avid sports fan, owned the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks.
Allen and Gates met while attending a private school in north Seattle. The two friends would later drop out of college to pursue the future they envisioned: A world with a computer in every home.
Gates so strongly believed it that he left Har- vard University in his junior year to devote him- self full-time to his and Allen’s startup, origi- nally called Micro-Soft. Allen spent two years at Washington State University before dropping out as well.
They founded the company in Albuquerque, N.M., and their first product was a computer language for the Altair hobby-kit personal com- puter, giving hobbyists a basic way to program and operate the machine.
After Gates and Allen found some success selling their programming language, MS-Basic, the Seattle natives moved their business in 1979 to Bellevue, Wash., not far from its eventual home in Redmond.
Microsoft’s big break came in 1980, when IBM Corp. decided to move into personal com- puters and asked Microsoft to provide the oper- ating system.
Gates and company didn’t invent the operat- ing system. To meet IBM’s needs, they spent $50,000 to buy one known as QDOS from an- other programmer, Tim Paterson. Eventually the product refined by Microsoft — and renamed DOS, for Disk Operating System — became the core of IBM PCs and their clones, catapulting Microsoft into its dominant position in the PC industry.
The first versions of two classic Microsoft
October 19, 2018 • Volume 32, Issue 19
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Courtesy photographs
Above: The Stratolaunch is rolled out during a ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Left: Paul Allen at the Flying Heritage Collection in April 2013. The Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum is Paul G. Allen’s collection of rare military aircraft, tanks and other military hardware from the United States, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom. It is located in Everett, Wash.
Allen has ties to Antelope Valley
Paul Allen was involved in several aerospace ventures that were centered on the Antelope Valley.
Oct. Oct. 4, 2004, Allen confirmed that he was the sole investor behind aerospace engineer and entrepreneur Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft. The craft was developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Allen and Rutan’s aviation company, Scaled Composites.
SpaceShipOne climbed to an altitude of 377,591 feet over the Mojave Air and Space Port and was the first privately funded effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space. It won the Ansari X Prize competition and received the $10 million prize.
On Dec. 13, 2011, Allen announced the creation of Stratolaunch Systems, also based at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Stratolaunch is a proposed orbital launch system consisting of a dual-bodied, six-engine jet aircraft, capable of carrying a rocket to high altitude; the rocket will then separate from its carrier aircraft and fire its own engines to complete its climb into orbit. The aircraft is currently undergo- ing taxi and engine tests.
If successful, this project will be the first wholly privately funded space transport system. Stratolaunch, which is partnering with Orbital ATK and Scaled Composites, is intended to launch in inclement weather, fly without worrying about the availability of launch pads and to operate from different locations. Stratolaunch plans to ultimately host six to 10 missions per year.
On April 13, 2015, Vulcan Aerospace was announced. It is the company within Allen’s Vulcan Inc. that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on-demand access.
products, Microsoft Word and the Windows op- erating system, were released in 1983. By 1991, Microsoft’s operating systems were used by 93 percent of the world’s personal computers.
The Windows operating system is now used on most of the world’s desktop computers, and Word is the cornerstone of the company’s preva- lent Office products.
Gates and Allen became billionaires when Microsoft was thrust onto the throne of tech- nology.
In 1986, with his sister, Jody, Paul Allen founded Vulcan, the investment firm that over- sees his business and philanthropic efforts. He founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the aerospace firm Stratolaunch, which has
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