Burt Rutan And Spaceship Two

Burt Rutan gives an exclusive interview and a glimpse at a possible future for commercial suborbital spaceflight. That's what he sees as the necessary precursor to a truely viable commercial orbital system. The Spaceship Two design will only be able to give passengers about four minutes of zero gravity.

"First of all, just because people have kind of discovered 'Oh, now we can have a personal commercial spaceflight industry' … that doesn't mean we can just throw money at the problem and send people to resort hotels in orbit," Rutan told SPACE.com.

Rutan admitted that he's frustrated but committed to building suborbital spaceships.

"I'd love to be working on going to the Moon. I'm doing this really because I don't think I can convince a funder to go out and invest in an orbital system that we're not sure would work."

In Rutan's plotting of things to come, Tier 2 is orbital.

"My bottom line is that we have to have some kind of breakthroughs," Rutan explained. "What's needed is to create an environment to have breakthroughs … to try things that may seem illogical at first."

If you're interested in space, it's a good read.