On July 20, 1969, for the first time, a man set foot on our satellite. Just over half a century later, the era of space tourism was ushered in with the plans of billionaires Branson, Bezos and Musk.
“This is a small step for one man, but a great leap for mankind.” It was July 20, 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered this phrase as he placed his foot on the last step of the Lunar Excursion Module’s ladder. Fifty-two years later, his words can no longer be true. A little more than half a century after the landing of the first man on the Moon, the era of space tourism opened thanks to the ambitious projects of brilliant and visionary entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. And July 20 becomes a symbolic date: on this day the founder of Amazon leaves for a flight that will take him beyond Earth orbit with his brother Mark, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk. Mission that marks two records: aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard the youngest and oldest astronaut in the history of spaceflight. From 1969 to 2021, the Space Race has traveled fast and the universe, with preliminary tests for the start of commercial space tourism, no longer seems so far away.
From Armstrong to the Moon, the Space Race
Neil Armstrong was the commander of the Apollo 11 space mission. When he landed on the Moon in 1969, it marked the apex of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union that had begun in 1957, with Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. About a month later it was the turn of the first living being between the stars, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2, while in 1958 the U.S. launched the Jupiter rocket with the first American satellite. With Yuri Gagarin, the first man to fly into orbit in 1961, Valentina Tereskova, the first flight of a woman in 1963, the USSR seemed to be ahead of the USA. Then the Apollo 11 space mission that marked a turning point: human beings walked on lunar soil. With Neil Armstrong, there was also Buzz Aldrin who put his feet on the satellite 19 minutes after his colleague. The two did a walk on the Moon of two and a half hours and collected 21.5 kg of material to bring back to Earth. It was the first exit from a spacecraft broadcast live on television worldwide. “I was relieved, ecstatic and extremely surprised at the success we had achieved,” the commander of the Apollo 11 mission confessed a few years later in interviews and biographies.
52 years conquering Space
After Armstrong, over the next 3 years, 12 Americans reached the Moon, while the USSR, in 1971, launched the first space station, Salyut. In 1975, the first joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. space mission ended the Cold War between the stars and began a collaboration that has led to today’s results. In the following decades was built the International Space Station, temporarily set aside the Moon, the attention has shifted to the exploration of the Solar System with Mars that has become the main objective of the next steps of men in space. In this context are Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. The founder of Telsa and Space X is planning a 4-person trip to orbit and is aiming for journeys of several days between the stars. The patron of Virgin (and Virgin Galactic), surprisingly, has beaten everyone by organizing the first flight into orbit with space tourists, anticipating the founder of Amazon by 9 days, and becoming the possible first entrepreneur to make short space trips with the first launches announced for 2022. Finally, there is Bezos, who has chosen July 20 for his departure among the stars.
The mission of Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard
The launch of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company’s New Shepard rocket is broadcast live at 2:30 p.m. on “Focus.” The entrepreneur himself with his brother Mark, 18-year-old Daemen and 82-year-old Funk, take part in the suborbital flight with civilians on board. The project, along with Branson’s, gives the real start to space tourism, in microgravity conditions, outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The New Shepard will cross the Kármán Line, the boundary that delimits the height of 100km above sea level, exiting the atmosphere and entering outer space. A short journey lasting ten minutes but marking a huge step forward in the race to conquer space. In the first three minutes, the aircraft will accelerate to a speed of Mach 3, beyond which the passengers will no longer feel gravity. In the next three minutes, the aircraft will reach Apogee and begin its descent, again in microgravity. Finally, parachutes will slow the capsule down to one mile per hour, the speed at which the landing takes place, in the Chihuahua Desert in West Texas. It has only been 52 years since the first human footprint in Space and already the Earth seems ready to expand its horizon by taking people on a journey into the universe.
Stefania Bernardini