Private flight: Houston, you have a problem.

• Author: Passantino, George
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

SPACESHIPONE, the privately funded space vehicle, has returned to earth with the $10 million Ansari X-Prize. That one small trip for a ship was a giant leap away from the government's monopoly on space travel.

In a press conference shortly after SpaceShipOne's prize-winning flight, Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites and designer of the skybreaking spacecraft, explained that he has a "helluva lot bigger goal than [the acrospace industry giants] do.... I absolutely have to develop a manned space tourism system that is at least 100 times safer than anything that has ever flown man to space." Rutan views the competitive commercial market as the best incubator of safe space flight. Private firms must...