Burt Rutan!
(Guy who built Space Ship One, the private ship that just flew into space twice and won the 10 million dollar X prize.)
The guy built this rocket on a (relative) shoestring, and it works great. My favorite part of the ship is the front "wheel" of the ship's landing gear. It consists of a block of Walnut wood! What a perfect, elegant solution to that problem. Once the ship lands it needs to scrub off all it's velocity quickly, so Rutan just put that block of wood on the front. It fills the bill brilliantly, the wood scraping against tarmack would give great braking, and it would just grind away, and you put a new one on for the next flight(The back 2 wheels are in fact wheels, and one steers the craft with independent brakes on the back 2 wheels.) Nasa should take a lesson, faced with the same problem, they would have drew up specs, and engineered some new technology for millions of dollars, that would not have worked as well as Rutan's block of wood.
I have nothing against NASA, but love the Rutan's ability to get the job so effiently.