Commercial Space Industry Quotes

For the first time in history, a private company is organizing a mission to the moon. This mission will inspire countries of the world, citizens, our youth.

Since Yuri Gagarin and Al Shepard's epoch flights in 1961, all space missions have been flown only under large, expensive government efforts. By contrast, our program involves a few, dedicated individuals who are focused entirely on making spaceflight affordable.

My quest to expand access to space began more than a decade ago, when I teamed up with Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites to build SpaceShipOne. This innovative air-launched vehicle was the world's first private spacecraft to carry an astronaut into sub-orbital space.

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.

Target launch date for Falcon I maiden flight is Halloween(October 31) from our island launch complex in the Kwajalein Atoll. For potential customers out there, I should mention that Kwajalein has some of the worlds best scuba diving and snorkeling! It is literally a tropical paradise.

In the space business, space had gotten very much to be the aerospace industry. This is something that governments only do and it's where the Boeings and the Lockheed's and the Northrop's and so forth. And there's no way these small companies could do it.

As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit.

When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise.

The commercial space industry owes a huge debt to Patti Grace Smith. There might not be a commercial spaceflight industry were it not for Patti's leadership.

The United States, Russia, and China are the only three countries in the world that can launch astronauts into space. Mostly in the U.S. you see some companies trying to launch private commercial people into space, but nobody's done it yet. The only private vehicle that's made it into space so far is Spaceship 1 in 2004, and that was an effort that was funded by one of the Microsoft founders, and he spent about $20 million to develop this spacecraft to do a sub-orbital flight. And it's not the same as going into orbit, but it was a huge first step.