CU’s Conference on World Affairs: Space tourism advances exploration

Blasting people off the planet may be the best way to convince them to take better care of it.

That’s the contention of Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, a self-described space geek who trained as an astrobiologist and had hoped to honeymoon in space.

“Astronauts report a really profound experience of connectedness with their home planet and everything on it,” she said. “You don’t see political borders from space. Now is the perfect time to get that message out that we all share the spaceship Earth. Learning how to work peacefully on it is the task of our generation.”

Whitesides is one of three speakers on Tuesday’s “Space Tourism for Fun and Profit” panel at the University of Colorado’s Conference on World Affairs.

She and her husband, space tourism company Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, were among the first to buys tickets in 2006 for a Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflight.

Though they haven’t made it to space yet, she’s prepared by traveling to the ocean floor in a submersible similar to a rocket and gone on 80 flights on zero-gravity planes, spending more than five hours weightless, 30 seconds at a time.

“I have a lot more experience with space than the average person,” she said. “I’ve wanted to go in space since I was 6 years old.”

Panelist Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, considers launching paying customers into space as the next logical step to advance space exploration.

“It sounds frivolous, but tourism may be the biggest economic driver in getting more people into space,” he said.

Commercializing space travel, he said, should have the same benefits as commercializing flight.

After the Wright brothers’ first successful powered flight more than 100 years ago, the government initially supported the industry by buying planes for the military — just as NASA has supported space exploration.

The next step was commercial aviation, which led to improved technology and lower prices that made flying commonplace.

“People are already willing to pay these private rocket companies to go up and come right back down,” Shostak said. “Even at 5 or 10 or 20 million dollars, you have a market to go up and orbit the earth for the weekend. The market isn’t to go to Mars and mine stuff and bring it back. The market is to take people on a joy ride.”

With NASA relinquishing its monopoly on the launch business and companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX building rockets, he said, space tourism is fast becoming reality.

SpaceX, for example, recently announced that two people are paying an undisclosed amount to take a trip around the moon as soon as 2018.

“People 1,000 years from now, looking back, what they will remember are things that change society forever,” he said. “They will remember that this was when some people actually got off the planet, when we began very limited forays off of our world. It’s a step in that direction.”

Rounding out the panel is Fred Haberman, co-founder of Haberman, a creative agency, and Urban Organics. He doesn’t have a background in astronomy, but instead brings a love of exploration as the former owner of an adventure travel company that specialized in remote wilderness areas.

His agency also promoted a sweepstakes for a ticket on a Virgin Galactic space flight, giving him the opportunity to interview Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson.

“A lot of good things can come from the private investment in space travel,” he said. “Who knows, we may need to colonize another planet. I’m a big supporter of us continuing to explore space travel.”

So would he go into space as a tourist?

Yes, but he doesn’t want to go first.

“The idea of being able to see Earth from beyond our atmosphere and explore other planets is just so exciting,” he said. “I would probably wait a few iterations, though. There need to be more tests. We just need a few successes. If in 10 years we’re there, I’m in.”

Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa