Moon Tourism by 2020? Richard Garriott Concerned About Safety

RPG pioneer Richard Garriott has chimed in on the Obama administration's plans to stimulate the commercial spaceflight industry.

Over the next five years, administration proposals would spend $6 billion on the effort to boost space tourism. Industry execs are optimistic, envisioning space hotels and trips to the moon by 2020. In addition to creating around 5000 jobs, it's hoped that commercial spaceflight will help NASA avoid paying billions of dollars to get astronauts to the international space station. The space agency is retiring its shuttle fleet this year, and it pays about $50 million per seat to the Russians for a roundtrip ride to the space station.

But Richard Garriott, who dropped $30 million of his own to hop a Russian Soyuz into orbit, thinks American space industry optimists are way off base on a key issue: safety.

"I think that for people to say that we here in the U.S. have done a great job on safety with the old way is just wrong," Garriott told Space.com, adding that, compared to the space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz has a "100-fold difference" in its safety record.

Since the space shuttle's debut in 1981, NASA has suffered two disasters that took the lives of 14 astronauts.