Commercialization of Space: A Korean View

In his 1872 fictional story "From the Earth to the Moon", Jules Verne imagined the Moon as a favorite destination for tourists and a great place for commerce. Since then, we have seen the emergence of big airplanes and space flight has attracted private citizens to pay millions of dollars to visit the International Space Station. Indeed, space holds an attraction to people and industry that go far beyond satellites and short visits. As Jules Verne predicted, people want to reside on the Moon and Mars, living and working on research or high-tech fabrications. While Korea has already successfully deployed satellites, it is looking to step further. This paper presents the result of a survey designed to get a feeling of what the common people believe the status of the Korean space program is. Based on 324 analyzed questionnaires it was found that ordinary people opinion not only appropriate space development about commercialization in Korea. A follow up and expansion of the survey is planned for after the launch of National Space Development in the fall of 2008.