Rutan said anyone offering spacecraft for commercial service should demonstrate their confidence in the system's safety by having their children be among the first fliers, as Branson has said he will do.

"Spaceship guru roasts his rivals," Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com

Should cigarette makers force their children to smoke or withdraw their product? Should parachute makers force their children to skydive or withdraw their product?

This does not follow. People afraid of heights should be allowed to sell bungee jumping supplies without personally testing them. The deathly afraid maker might design better equipment than a fearless one. Makers of hazardous products do not have to partake and may be sending a clearer message if they don't. That does not mean their product should be shunned.

It is ironic that Virgin Galactic will be required to disclose its product is quite risky. It will require flying thousands of times before showing a spacecraft is as safe as a military jet. Very little is learned from a single draw on a distribution. 98% of shuttle astronauts returned. All that Branson and his family flying prove by flying is that they are risk takers, not that his craft is safe. It is a greater disservice to create a false impression of safety than to put a product on the market where hazards are fully disclosed and no effort is made to express false confidence.

Rutan's sentiment is a throwback to medieval food testers to test for poison. He is not alone--Transportation Safety Administration required people to take a drink of liquids they were carrying (at least in Austin). Weird.

We will have a choice of vendors for spaceflight. Some of them will fly the owners first. Some of them will fly with a pilot and others will be remotely operated from the ground.

Would Space-Shot.com customers like me to raise the price of an entry so I can fly personally before the first winner?

While Burt's comment might have been a bit over the top, he is correct in that the designers and makers of this stuff need clearly to demonstrate their confidence in their product. XCOR does this by standing next to our rocket engines when they run. We armor them with shields in case we have a bad day, and to protect the uninvolved public. And we will be passengers on our vehicles during test, before they are turned over to the customer. One of the perks of working at XCOR. ;->

It is a bit much...those at the stick when the first 747 took off in 1970 were still 'test pilots,' even of that phrase creates visions of X-15 jockeys.

I would rephrase it (though admittedly as a childfree person) as "I'd put my kids on the first flight with fare paying passengers..."