Today I ran into and watched a talk by Burt Rutan, the boss of Scaled Composits, the company that built and launched Space Ship One. You know that this was the first privately funded space ship worth its name - it reached an altitude of more than 100 km which is defined as the edge of space, right?

I had reported about my visit to Mohave, California to witness the historic event of the first attempt by a non-governmental group to enter space. You can read my thoughts in From Mohave to Aldebaran.

It amazed me that this was now already more than two years ago and I could not help wondering what had happened since then and where we stand now.

In his talk, and by the way - here it is ...

(TED talk Burt Rutan - might not show in your aggregator.
read on the blog itself please.)

... Mr. Rutan makes a good point in connecting financial gain with progress.

I remember when the first two people (during the epoch we are supposed to remember) set foot on the moon, I was very expectant that now it would not be long until we would go to Mars and at least establish a settlement on the moon. At that time I thought that all this would happen in a time frame that I might be able to go. But none of that happened.

And a good reason for that might be that there was no money in it. And that reality has a big inertia so it took about forty years for a new reality to solidify enough so that now people actually invest money to build space ships with a perspective to make a profit. I'm sure they could have done the same thing forty years ago, but they did not.

But before I go I want to switch viewpoints once more - like I more and more do recently - and look at this under the aspect of "the world is as I see it" ....

....

... So, why did I take so long to change my reality, should have done this forty years ago, might be actually flying the Millennium Falcon to Aldebaran by now - as the pilot!