Spaceship guru roasts his rivals

In the past, Virgin Galactic has said commercial flights could start in late 2008 or 2009, at roughly $200,000 a seat. But during a Thursday afternoon talk, Virgin Galactic's vice president of operations, Alex Tai, told conference attendees that the flight schedule would not be set until his company and Rutan were satisfied that the SpaceShipTwo rocket planes were safe.

"I'm not going to tell you exactly when they're going to begin operating," he said.

Other suborbital spaceflight companies have promised to begin flights as early as next year — even though they have not yet sent any test vehicles to outer space, as Rutan's team has.

Rutan has occasionally said that he had a schedule for moving from suborbital to orbital spaceflight, but on Thursday he downplayed the prospects for commercial orbital travel. "I don't see anything out there right now that I would put my own money into as being the solution for affordable, safe enough flying of the public to orbit," he said.

Extending passenger spaceflight to Earth orbit would call for future breakthroughs, from people who might be considered "wacky" today, Rutan said. "Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs," he observed. "The 'smart' people don't."

Fulfilling his dream of safe, affordable flights to the moon would probably require even bigger breakthroughs, including novel ideas for space propulsion, he said. "If I knew what these breakthroughs were, I wouldn't screw around with suborbital space tourism, period," he said.

Rutan peppered his speech with sharp remarks about some of the businesses and organizations represented at the luncheon — and tried to take the edge off those remarks by reminding his listeners that "this is a humorous talk." Here's a sampling:

• He criticized current legislation that called for the FAA to regulate suborbital passenger spacecraft like rockets rather than airplanes, with a temporary "fly at your own risk" policy for ticket-buyers. "There is no focus on the protection of those who buy tickets and fly in space, and that's wrong, it's crippling to the industry, and it's going to have to be changed for there to be a sustainable industry," he said. During a later talk, Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said that the legislation was often misunderstood — and that the legislation would be revisited if problems arose.
• He wondered what happened to his former rivals in the X Prize competition, saying that he didn't "see anything out there" and that some of them "have given up." In fact, several X Prize competitors are working to field suborbital spacecraft, although Rutan's team is admittedly farther along.
• Rutan said anyone offering spacecraft for commercial service should demonstrate their confidence in the system's safety by having their children be among the first fliers, as Branson has said he will do. In response, Chuck Lauer, Rocketplane Kistler's director of business development, said he thought that personal commitment to safety was the norm in the suborbital space industry. "We fly before our customers," he told MSNBC.com.
• Rutan said he was bothered by the fact that some involved in the space industry were resorting to "racing antique home-builts to prop up a spaceport hopeful." That dig was a reference to plans by the Rocket Racing League to stage races in New Mexico, using rocket planes built by Mojave-based XCOR Aerospace. XCOR executives declined to respond to Rutan's comments.

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