I had an excellent tech instructor during a Beech course many years ago who was heavily involved in the systems engineering behind the Starship (basically adapting earlier 1900 systems and the unique conditioning system was his pervue). He later went on to working on the 1900D project which actually utilized a lot of the systems improvements from Starship.
Anyways, he didn't have many particularly positive things to discuss in regards to Burt Rutan. Burt is a visionary and elegant designer of aircraft, and big pioneer of composites in aviation - but ultimately he wasn't a talented production engineer who stuck things out through to the actual production phase.
It was explained to my that Burt basically abandoned the program after completion of the smaller scale prototype by Scaled Composites. When it came time to develop the tooling, processes, certification basis, and systems of a true - production quality aircraft - he had largely detached himself from Beech.
That, and all the financial troubles and fallout from the Starship program that lead to the eventual purchase of Beech by Raytheon - had left Rutan's name a bit sour at Beechcraft.
So anyways, I don't know if Rutan would ultimately be much of an interesting guest in regards to seeing what we enjoy as simmers and what Nick has so generously developed. Simply put, beyond the initial prototype, overall aerodynamics and design (which ultimately was still less efficient and more costly than a similar King Air 350) - Rutan himself was long removed from the Starship project at rollout.
