I guess he's figured out, for whatever reason, that he'd better get with the program and apply for a launch license.

To help enable future space tourism, Rutan is willing to work with AST on developing certification standards for manned reusable spacecraft, which don't exist today, he said.

Translation: I don't want to deal with this new regulatory environment that I don't understand, but my funding is based on winning the X-Prize, and they're apparently so close minded that they'll disqualify me if I won't play ball.

He believes such vehicles should be certified like aircraft, to protect passengers and people on the ground.

Yes, that's nice, Burt, but you don't want to pay the costs of certification, and there's no certification regime for space vehicles, so what are you gonna do...?

However, "our program has nothing to do with certification," Rutan said. "We're not going to be certifying SpaceShipOne and offering rides in it. I'm in the business of just doing the research and development flight testing."

Oh, I see. You just want to continue to play your little game of having it both ways.

Anyway, I'm glad that you finally came to your senses, for whatever reason.

The article does raise an interesting point- namely, that the airport SpaceShip One plans to land at will have to be certified as a spaceport, which involves a large amount of burdensome environmental study, before the attempt can take place.

This seems to me like a "leftover" from ELV-type thinking: any commercial facility that has space vehicles operating out of it is inherently going to be a launch facility, with all of the (real) potential environmental problems thereof. The regulations don't seem to consider the possibility that a private spacecraft might be just landing (since that was something private spacecraft didn't do, until now), and thus be empty of fuel and no more of an environmental hazard than your standard airplane. Since a large number of the suborbital commercial vehicles seem to include similar glide landings in their flight profiles, perhaps a special "landing-only" spaceport certification could be created, or even a rule stating that you can land anywhere provided that you don't have too much propellant still abord and that you take off from a spaceport?

Knowing the common Deep Green tactic of "we can't outlaw it, so we'll choke it to death with environmental studies", this could be a hidden showstopper for a lot of private launch plans. On the other hand, it could also be a big moneymaker if somebody has enough cash to get their spread certified as a spaceport and then sell slots to X-prize hopefulls...

If he's landing at Mojave, it's being worked (despite the griping in the article). The airport management knows they have to get their act together in this area if they want to be a spaceport, and I think that the EIS is under way.

>>a private spacecraft might be just landing (...), and thus be empty of fuel and no more of an environmental hazard than your standard airplane.

Just because it's landing, doesn't mean it's fuel tanks are empty.