On the first flight test of any spacecraft, you're going to find surprises.
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.
In the astronaut business - the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle; it's the most complicated flying machine ever built. And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is, 'There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.'
In the coming era of manned space exploration by the private sector, market forces will spur development and yield new, low-cost space technologies. If the history of private aviation is any guide, private development efforts will be safer, too.
Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.
For Virgin Galactic's customers, it is transportation to the most amazing experience of their lives. I very much look forward to sending some Scots into space.
If you want to go into space first time on a new vehicle that's never been flown, you want to go with a pro.
To allow public access to orbit, we would need breakthroughs that would lower the cost by a lot more than an order of magnitude and increase safety by a factor of 100 as compared to every launch system used since the first manned space flight. I think airborne launch will be a significant part of the safety solution.
And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.
When you're on a Soyuz flight, you know that when you go to Russia, you're going to do X, Y, and Z. You have that plan already laid out.
I take the NASA physical every year.
I want people to go into space, to orbit around the world a few times, even to stay there for 24 hours and then come back to where they took off. And I also want people with a low income to be able to do that, not only rich people.
For the industry we're starting now, for suborbital flight, there is no destination, so the spacecraft you go up in has to be large and spacious. That's why SpaceShipTwo is much bigger than SpaceShipOne: It needs to be because you want those six people to be floating around and enjoying themselves.
As I'm sure you may know, I'm planning to become a spaceflight participant and have been recently approved to begin my spaceflight training by the Russian space federation having passed the necessary medical and physical tests.
