Rutan Speaks

Burt Rutan, designer of the vehicles that will allow Virgin Galactic to offer suborbital spaceflight to high net worth individuals, recently compared the early days of the private spaceflight industry to the beginning of the computer revolution.

Rutan noted critics who argue VG is marketing to millionaires interested in a fun adventure, and that's a very small customer pool.  Of course, those critics have a point.  Rutan countered that most people who bought early personal computers used them mostly to play games.  Only years later, when the Internet began to boom, did we see the real potential of personal computers to change the world.  That's also when the big bucks started to fill up Silicon Valley.  He said it might take a few years, but somebody will eventually figure out a business model that works for space operations, and then we'll see space hotels and the real opening of the space frontier.