Small and cheap could become the new normal for space exploration with the advent of U.S. orbital and suborbital missions managed by private companies, according to panelists at a free California Institute of Technology lecture on Thursday examining the impact of space commercialization.

As the government hands off mission duties to contractors, such as Hawthorne's Space Exploration Technologies, the transition could drive new technology that would benefit scientific work even as astronauts broaden their job description to include giving tours, NASA administrator John Grunsfeld said.

"Technology for technology's sake rarely ends up being all that useful," Grunsfeld told a crowd of Caltech students, science professionals and others. "But if you have a need, which would be smaller payloads which match technology, then you get true innovation."

The panel also included SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, Virgin Galactic chief technology officer Steve Isakowitz, Space Policy Institute founder John Logsdon and Caltech professor Paul Wennberg. Moderating the panel was Fiona Harrison, a Caltech professor who also serves as principal investigator of NASA's X-ray orbiter NuStar.

Isakowitz, a former NASA administrator, said that regular space tourism could open the doors for foundations and nonprofits such as Caltech to launch their own low-cost missions for academic purposes.


"Why is this one of the few industries that doesn't have a Moore's Law?" Isakowitz asked, referring to the idea that computer chips fit twice as many transistors every two years. "We're sort of stuck in this conundrum of prices are either the same or going up. I think for the first time we have a change ... there's nothing inherently that says a payload has to be a billion dollars."

Wennberg, however, wasn't so sure that costs would reach affordable levels any time soon, in comparison to safer projects such as ground-based telescopes.

"You come up with numbers for an orbiter around Mars, just to send a toaster, something that would say I'm still here, in the neighborhood of $2 (million),

$3 (million) $400 million, depending on how much risk you're willing to accept," he said. "So it's a large amount of money."

The risks associated with spaceflight was a major part of the panel's discussion, particularly because of previous space shuttle tragedies that killed the crews of Challenger and Columbia.

"No one ever wants to lose a life," Shotwell said. "Each of the commercial crew companies are hoping and praying that the other doesn't do something flippant and stupid. That would really cast a doubt on the need to pursue this."

Logsdon commented that NASA's record of two losses in

135 crashes is hardly ideal, but Grunsfeld and Isakowitz defended the space shuttle program.

"I think the government's record is incredibly excellent given how difficult it is to be excellent in the government," Isakowitz said. "It was really a terrible time after the Columbia accident. I felt for a while there we would never return to flight."

In the private sector, he added, there is greater flexibility to move past major incidents because the companies don't have to report to Congress and other government offices.

SpaceX has already demonstrated that private companies can be successful when it sent its unmanned Dragon capsule to the International Space Station last year, bringing supplies on a second trip and returning with cargo and scientific material.

The company has already begun discussions about building a colony on Mars, and Grunsfeld believes NASA can lend its experience to help the company develop technologies to do that.

"The scientific community needs to have missions on timescales that are comparable to professional lifetimes, to graduate student lifetimes," he said.