Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist best known now as host of Fox's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosts an annual debate at the Hayden Planetarium in the memory of the prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992.
This year, the topic under discussion was the commercialization of space, specifically: How much risk should businesses assume in space exploration? How can space businesses mitigate risk? How big are the potential opportunities of extraterrestrial resource mining, products, and real estate? What role does government play in the new paradigm of commercial space exploration?
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