Rutan: Space Tourism Still A Long Way Off

When SpaceShipOne officially broke into space Monday, television news announcers giddily told us they were already in line to become some of the first private space tourists. But the man who designed that historic spacecraft says, don't pack just yet. For the vast majority of us, space will still be a long time coming.

To make commercial passenger flights into space economically viable, Rutan says each flight will have to accommodate at least six passengers. "It makes an enormous difference to fly six or 10 people," he says. "Because whether you're flying six or 10 people, you're flying the same avionics, you're flying one pilot, you're flying the same checkout, preflight and post-flight, and those are the expensive things."

In an interview with KFMB TV, Bill Sprague, the team leader of American Astronautics Corp., agrees. But he might challenge Rutan's timing. Sprague's company is a contestant in the Ansari X-Prize competition, with a seven-place spacecraft it hopes to flight test by the end of September.

"Our intention is to enter the market as a commercial space enterprise. We're out to win an industry, not a prize," he says, a sort of left-handed bow to the Scaled Composites team.

But Sprague, Rutan and others who hope to make a commercial go of space tourism still have a lot of work to do, says Rutan. To attract paying customers, spacecraft will need bigger windows and will have to fly much higher -- high enough so that Uncle Vern and Aunt June can get out of their harnesses and float around a bit.

FMI: www.scaled.com, www.americanastronautics.com