Commercial Space Quotes

We all know the Internet didn't explode until it became a commercial enterprise. Space communication will probably have the same characteristic.

Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.

Space travel will be like every other business. There will be competitors. . . . Thirty months from now, I'm confident we'll be flying people into space.

Point-to-point transit via low orbit could dramatically speed up international flights, connecting the world even further. And safe, consistent space travel opens up the possibility of commercial space stations, trips to the moon and exploration beyond.

The ISS operates as the 'anchor customer' in low earth orbit to support new commercial space services, including delivery of cargo and, before long, crew transportation services.

Before the current decade ends, fee-paying passengers will be experiencing suborbital flights aboard privately funded vehicles. . . . It won't be too long before bright young men and women set their eyes on careers in Earth orbit and say: "I want to work 200 kilometers from home-straight up!"

A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.

Richard Branson is probably the most visible of the private commercial space guys, and what is venture, Virgin Galactic is about is sub orbital flight. That is, you'll see a spacecraft that looks more or less like an airplane and it will fly into space, but only spend about 15 minutes. It'll go up in a parabolic arc and then fall back down, and so the customers on that flight will only get about five minutes of weightlessness. They'll get to glimpse the horizon of the Earth, take a look at it before just before they start coming back down into the atmosphere.

I am excited to think that the development of commercial capabilities to send humans into low Earth orbit will likely result in so many more Earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of space flight.

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

NewSpace, commercial space - whatever you want to call it - is rising, with or without government support. It is rising in West Texas and on the Gulf Coast, in California and on the Virginia coast, and rising from the ashes of the old space program in Florida and in small shops and university labs in a hundred places in between.

The current market cost for a space flight, about a week in space and about six people have gone with the Russians so far to the International Space Station; it costs about $30 to $35 million. So, it's not for the faint of heart. But our own market studies that we've commissioned as well as some public market studies all indicate that there are somewhere around 20 or so individuals every year who have both the means and the interest to do this. So, the market is definitely out there.

One day, people will be able to buy tickets to visit space.

The vision is to figure out how there can really be dynamic entrepreneurialism in space.

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.

With space travel, [it's] no different. You know, in 1990 I read the name Virgin Galactic Airways. Loved the name. And set out to try to find an engineer or rocket scientist in the world who could build a safe, reusable rocket that could take people to and from space and we could start a whole new era of commercial space travel.

I think eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help.

The commercial space industry is enormous and ripe for disruption.

The bottom line is 2018 should finally be the year where we see the early stages of broad-based commercial space tourism appear. Demand will certainly be driven by the early successes or failures of those missions, the marketing of those missions, as well as the propensity for tourists to become repeat flyers.

I have watched SS2 evolve over the years into an incredible vehicle that is going to open up space to more people than ever before.

SpaceX has reopened the cosmos, and the space race is back on, only this time it is in the private sector.

If space is not profitable for business, there will be very few people in space.

Flight out of the atmosphere is a simple thing to do and should have been available to the public twenty years ago. Ten years from now, we will have space tourism where you will be able to see the black sky and the curvature of the earth. It will be the most exciting roller coaster ride you can buy.

Growing companies need commercial space, and their employees need to live nearby.

Rather than being an impediment, NASA can and should be the driver of commerce, the provider of the technology necessary to make some big money in space. The truth is that private enterprise already has a huge presence up there.