Captain Bringdown

The achievements of Burt Rutan and his team are certainly heady stuff even for the casual space buff. But there are dangers ahead and not all of them involve crashed aircraft. The Powers That Be will not be made fools of nor will they be topped. If Rutan and/or others continue with successful flights, TPTB will be moved to stop them. This could easily be done. The most likely way would be through regulation or legislation. Perhaps there will be an accident involving property damage, injury or even death (God forbid!). The government (whose job it is, after all, to protect us... a little libertarian sarcasm there), will step in and with the help of many "experts" will say, "You see, space travel is complicated and dangerous. So in order to protect you from yourselves, we will pass this legislation that will require certain safety equipment, procedures, etc., etc." And that will be the end of private space. This is even more likely, it seems to me, as people with the stature of Rutan make more and more public, "in your face" critical remarks pointed at government projects. Not that I would want him to stop, of course.

I write all these things as someone on the outside looking in. Yet someone who has studied a bit of history and has had, at least, a bit of a peek inside the workings of the Halls of Power. Of course, there is a simpler, perhaps more likely scenario: an economic collapse. That would put the kabosh on the whole project for sure.

I remember at Starstruck and AMROC we used to say that our major problems were not technical, we could usually figure out a way to do what we needed to do. Our problems were always economic. Now, Rutan seems to have conquered both technical and economic problems so the only thing left are political problems. THEY could turn out to be the brick wall. I sure hope I am wrong.