NASA is doing nothing but development. They're not doing research in manned spaceflight at all and I see no reason for them to do that because we already know that it will work and we already know exactly how it will work.

There is a rampant tendency in any industry where someone is trying to sell something with a bunch of data, where they cherry pick a little bit... bias a little bit. This becomes quite easy when there is an enormous amount of data to cherry pick from.

We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration.

A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again.

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.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding