How will private spaceflight succeed as an industry?
Not by making [private] spaceflight twice as safe as government spaceflight, or 10 times as safe, but 100 or 600 times as safe. By 1931, after a few years’ experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight? In 1931, for commercial airlines the risk was 1 in 33,000. For manned spacecraft it has been about 1 in 70. I believe that to have an expanding business that won’t be hindered by people’s fear of flying you have to be as safe as the airliners.
Is there a role for the FAA in maintaining safety in space, as the administration now has for airplane travel?
The current solution is to let people fly at their own risk. Show them the safety record for the spacecraft they are flying on and have them sign a waiver that says they know this is dangerous and that they are willing to take the risk. The FAA only gets involved when it comes to the people on the ground, the public who aren’t choosing to be passengers. The FAA is obliged to enforce rules of operation so that people don’t have something coming through their roof and killing them. I don’t believe that [the FAA’s involvement should be so limited]—the problem is that spacelines will be much more at risk from a lethal liability climate than if they did have FAA approval on their spacecraft safety.
I have spent an enormous amount of time hugging families. We had a terrible accident.
Do you think insurance companies are going to be willing to underwrite spacecraft operators?
Look at how risky the boosters are that launch commercial satellites, yet almost every one of them is insured, although the premiums are very expensive. Now if your chances of being in an accident are really 1 in 33,000, the insurance premiums will be much more affordable. But if someone comes out with a space tourism vehicle that is only 5 or 10 times safer than government spaceflight, the insurance is not likely to be affordable.
Can rocket technology ever be that safe, particularly in light of the recent lethal explosion that occurred during a test at your facility?
I have spent an enormous amount of time hugging families of people in intensive care and people who have lost their son. We had a terrible accident. But first of all, we weren’t doing a rocket test. We didn’t even have fuel at the site. We were working with the oxidizer, and we discovered a risk that we didn’t think was there. Again, it’s appropriate to note that statistically the risk for all manned spaceflight is 1 in 70. There has to be an extremely large improvement to fly the public. That’s the reason we’re not doing [private] orbital systems. It’s not because there isn’t money to fund it but because I don’t know how to make something safe enough to go into orbit. That’s why we’re focused on suborbital flight. We believe we can make it safe enough.
How does SpaceShipTwo compare with Russia’s old Soyuz capsule, which has already carried five private passengers into space?
I couldn’t compare it to a Soyuz. It’s OK for a space tourist like Anousheh [Ansari, who visited the International Space Station in 2006] to go into orbit in a very small capsule with tiny windows and three people crammed in. Because there you can have a destination that’s big and spacious. Ultimately there will be some really cool stuff, like a resort hotel in orbit. However, 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.
What will a trip in SpaceShipTwo be like for a passenger?
Well, my job is not going to be running a spaceline or selling tickets or flying. My job is to build a spaceship that is affordable and safe enough to fly the public. We are working very hard to optimize the experience, because if you don’t give people the best experience, they will go somewhere else for their spaceflight.
What do you mean by “optimize the experience” for the passenger?
I don’t want to indicate everything that entails because we’d just as well let our competitors find out about it at the latest possible moment! But some of the things we have talked about are that the ships will be large with large windows. It will be a large cabin. The details on how that’s done we will be proving in test flights. I wouldn’t be surprised if at that time we discovered other features that would add to the experience.
