Actually, Burt Rutan already designed and marketed a self launching
sailplane called the Solitaire, 20 years or so ago.

http://www.rutanaircraft.com/htmlpages/orderform.html Photo, 2/3 down the
page.

I was quite excited about it at the time, but it did not turn out to be very
successful -- too short span, too high wing loading, optimized for higher
speeds, poor thermalling performance. It was quietly dropped from plans
sales by RAF.
-Bob Korves

"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
http://www.scaled.com/projects/globalflyer.html

Well if anyone out there in ras world is a buddy of
Rutan...I suspect he might make some terrific sailplanes
if he set his mind to it. For some reason I suspect
the very limited market would not be of much interest
to him


Economic models would suggest a strong incentive for
sailplane
manufacture in North America, but I wonder if the
numbers of potential
sales would justify this.

Any thoughts?