Burt Rutan Quotes

I've always hankered after going into space and walking on the moon and Mars. I did want to be an astronaut, and had there been a manned space flight programme in the U.K., I would have been knocking on the door.

I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

When the history books are written in a thousand years, when space travel would have become routine, the moment that humans first left Earth will be of huge importance. Star City is a central part of this story and it deserves more recognition.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

The time will come when we permit more people in space.

There is a potential to be a big explosion of what spaceflight is gonna mean to just an everyday person in the near future. I think it's very hopeful for our young people: all the exciting things that they could be doing in the future relative to space and space exploration.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

Space is going to be commonplace.

If NASA is to reach beyond the Moon and someday reach Mars, it must be relieved of the burden of launching people and cargo to low earth orbit. To do that, we must invest more in commercial spaceflight.

You don't go into space just for the science. Economically, it is not worth it. I think the reason we should be in space is for the exploration; it's the human endeavour.

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

It's time to open the space frontier to citizen explorers.

During my 8 years as chairman, I had the privilege to peer into the future to see dynamic citizen astronauts returning to and from the heavens which we can expect in the future.

Virgin Galactic, which will be operating SpaceShipTwo, will be only one of several spacelines. The competitors for Virgin include the Russians, Bezos's Blue Origin, and possibly Rocketplane Kistler. And likely a couple of others who are smart enough not to tell people what they are doing!

In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space... But you laid the foundation for space tourism.

With any luck, by the time NASA's space probe hits Pluto, you'll be booking a spaceflight with a privately run suborbital airline.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

Not only shall we be able to cruise in space, …

The future of the human face is space exploration.

China, Russia and India are shooting for the Moon. United Arab Emirates says Mars. Other private citizens and companies are heading either to Mars, asteroids, or the Moon.