Rutan's hints of future directions in Discovery documentary: Tier Two and beyond

The other day I was watching the first part of "Black Sky: The Race for
Space," the Discovery Channel documentary on SpaceShipOne and the X
Prize.

There was a great segment where Rutan discussed some of his future
plans. The first thing he showed was an orbital variant of SS1, which
had a huge rocket roughly twice SpaceShipOne's length mounted to the
ship's rear.

During the segment he said that Tier One is the name for the program
for suborbital flights, Tier Two will cover orbital flights, and Tier
Three will cover flights beyond Earth's orbit (including flights to the
moon and other planets).

Rutan showed designs for space hotels, which included a dome for
"sitting back and contemplating in zero-g," and exercise rings. He also
mentioned that he had been contacted by someone with the New Horizons
program, to put a 100g piece of SpaceShipOne on the probe to Pluto --
he actually started shedding tears of joy at this point, which was
quite moving.

(He said that New Horizons was a private flight though, which confused
me a little, as I'm fairly certain it's NASA-funded.)


-- Neil