The space shuttle Endeavour as it launches from NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad on July 15, 2009. By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer for Space.com 2014-03-26 16:30:08 UTC

NEW YORK Space tourism and commercial space mining projects are ushering in a new era of human spaceflight, but the success of private spaceflight will depend on ensuring safety and reducing the cost, experts say.

Spaceflight companies such as SpaceX or Space Adventures, Ltd., could make the dream of space travel a reality for some, and may take on the role NASA once had in pushing the frontier of space, a panel of experts said during the 2014 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate debate March 19 at the American Museum of Natural History.

Some speakers looked to U.S. history for comparison to the potential of private spaceflight today.

The 19th-century adventurers Lewis and Clark, for example, weren't the actual people who colonized Montana, said Michael Gold, director of Washington, D.C., operations and business growth for the Bigelow Aerospace, a company that is developing private inflatable space stations. It was the homesteaders, the farmers and the businessmen who followed later.

"You can't just go to space like Montana homesteaders and pitch a tent," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum's Hayden Planetarium and the host of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey." Tyson moderated the evening's debate, which had the theme of "Selling Space."

In addition to Gold, the panel included several luminaries in human spaceflight, including Wanda Austin, president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation; John Logsdon, space policy analyst and professor emeritus at George Washington University; Elliot Pulham, CEO of the Space Foundation; Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, Ltd. and Robert Walker, former chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Like all new forms of travel, private spaceflight carries significant risks. But the panelists said they didn't see the risks as insurmountable.

Ultimately, a bad safety record would hurt companies. "There's a perception that commercial space is less safe," Gold said. But "if we have a bad day, we lose everything."

But beyond having a good safety record, it's important to understand the risks, Austin said. "It doesn't matter how safe [a spaceship] has been, it matters what one you're sitting on."

Excerpt from:

Private Space Flight Is Worth the Risk, Experts Say