So what good is space tourism, rocket racing, or other seemingly-trivial endeavors? They’re actually very important, Taylor Dinerman argues in this week’s edition of The Space Review. Such ventures can stimulate interest in the space industry among students, and a vibrant industry filled with small developers is as important to the overall space field as small experimental airplane developers are to the overall aviation industry, he believes. “Over time it is going to make the space industry a greater and greater part of the US and world economy. Just as motor sports helped develop cars that eventually brought mobility to millions, space sports have the potential to bring space travel to a public with undreamed of results.”

Also in this week’s TSR, I have an article about risk, or at least the perception of risk, in both public and private space endeavors. A panel at the NewSpace 2006 conference back in July tackled this issue as it related to personal spaceflight, with Reda Anderson (Rocketplane’s first customer) and XCOR’s Randall Clague discussed informed consent and how to minimize the risk of flying in suborbital vehicles. (Anderson’s approach: going to Rocketplane’s factory and “shake hands and hug every one of the men and women there and say, ‘Hi, I’m Reda Anderson. I may look like payload to you, but I look like a human to me, and my only acceptable risk is to come back in equal or better condition than when I went up there.’” That works, although it may not be that scalable.