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| View from back seat of SpaceShipOne |
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| Workers prepare the spaceship for its historic flight. The large rocket motor will produce 8,000 kg of thrust. |
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—— How will space travel develop in the future?
Within five to 10 years, you will see affordable spacelines taking people outside the atmosphere on suborbital flights. And I think within 10 or 15 years there will be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people that experience this, because the cost will come down significantly. I think the success of suborbital flights and the high level of safety will lead relatively quickly to the next major step - being able to visit a resort hotel in Earth orbit.
—— Do you foresee any difficulties in developing technology for space travel?
I think the complexities and difficulties that all the new players will face will be similar to the difficulties that the early airlines saw.
Those that solved the cost problems and the safety problems became the airlines that we know today. Those that did not solve either cost or safety problems didn't survive.
And this will be determined by the very best systems for efficiency, in which cost and safety will determine market share. This is potentially a very large industry, so there will be a lot of competition. The beauty of it is that with a lot of different things tried there will be breakthroughs. And things that we don't know about today will influence the winners in the future.
—— So when do you, yourself, plan to do space travel?
Oh, I plan to fly in space during the research and development tests of SpaceShipTwo. And that will hopefully be two or three years from now.
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