Burt Rutan Space Quotations

Look at the aerospace industry as it was just after the Kennedy talk. We were hiring like crazy. We were trying to get people graduated from college. Hey, you got to go to the program. We need you.

With any luck, by the time NASA's space probe hits Pluto, you'll be booking a spaceflight with a privately run suborbital airline.

To allow public access to orbit, we would need breakthroughs that would lower the cost by a lot more than an order of magnitude and increase safety by a factor of 100 as compared to every launch system used since the first manned space flight. I think airborne launch will be a significant part of the safety solution.

Achieving something that has never existed in manned spaceflight and that is high volume and public access.

A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.

In the coming era of manned space exploration by the private sector, market forces will spur development and yield new, low-cost space technologies. If the history of private aviation is any guide, private development efforts will be safer, too.

Our goal is to show that you can develop a robust, safe manned space program and do it at an extremely low cost

Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures...it can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees.

In fact, it's more dangerous to fly in space in America now than it was earlier. It certainly is more expensive...more difficult. We've been relying on our taxpayer-funded research organization, Na Say, excuse me, NASA.

For the industry we're starting now, for suborbital flight, there is no destination, so the spacecraft you go up in has to be large and spacious. That's why SpaceShipTwo is much bigger than SpaceShipOne: It needs to be because you want those six people to be floating around and enjoying themselves.

I strongly feel that, if we are successful, our program will mark the beginning of a renaissance for manned space flight. This might even be similar to that wonderful time period between 1908 and 1912 when the world went from a total of ten airplane pilots to hundreds of airplane types and thousands of pilots in 39 countries.

We believe a proper goal for safety is the record that was achieved during the first five years of commercial scheduled airline service which, while exposing the passengers to high risks by today's standards, was more than 100 times as safe as government manned space flight,

I absolutely have to develop a space tourism system that is at least 100 times safer than anything that has flown man into space, and probably significantly more than that.

Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epic flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts, ... By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable.

The most impressive airplane ever, I believe, was designed only a dozen years after the first operational jet. Stayed in service till it was too rusty to fly, taken out of service. We retreated in '98 back to something that was developed in '56. What? The most impressive spaceship ever, I believe, was a Grumman Lunar Lander.

Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace. We have redefined space travel as we know it.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries

The Russians did much bigger space launch vehicles for launching satellites and for getting men in orbit. They did that much sooner than America because America was very good at something else.

By 1931, after a few years' experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight?

Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epoch flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable.

Space travel is the only technology that is more dangerous and more expensive now than it was in its first year. Fifty years after Yuri Gagarin, the space shuttle ended up being more dangerous and more expensive to fly than those first throwaway rockets, even though large portions of it were reusable. It's absurd.

I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.