by Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor | January 29, 2013 11:22am ET
NASA has lost 17 astronauts in three space disasters, and Russia four cosmonauts, since the Space Age began. Is human space exploration worth the risk of human life?
AUTHOR BIO
Tariq Malik
Tariq joined TechMediaNetwork's SPACE.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became SPACE.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining SPACE.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Tariq on Google+.