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Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and said the iconic words “It is a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” Half a century later, some of the world’s richest people are trying to make the next big leap for humanity.
According to the statement by Charles Fishman, author of “One Giant Leap”, during an interview with Yahoo Finance’s On Move, humanity will soon be aware of the beginning of a new space age. Fishman also said that Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, and Elon Musk, Tesla’s founder, are fully aware that if we manage to reduce the cost of space travel down 90%, a space economy will begin to flourish.
Currently, space missions are costly. For example, the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX costs about $ 62 million. SpaceX is used by NASA to deliver payloads to the International Space Station. In the past week, Canada used Falcon 9 to launch three new orbit satellites.
Space tourism would be cheaper in the future
Getting people to space is also expensive. From the next, private astronauts will have the opportunity to ride shotguns on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule rocket on their way to the ISS since the space station recently announced plans to begin receiving tourists. However, this will cost around $ 52 million.
Fortunately, Bezos’ other companies, Blue Origin, joined Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to lower the price a bit. If their plans succeed, a ride to space costs $ 200,000 to $ 300,000, which is a lot cheaper than the current price. But in the battle against the last border, NASA faced some challenges. In 2015, two contracts were signed with Boeing and SpaceX for space aircraft to the ISS. Unfortunately, Boeing repeatedly delayed his Starliner Capsule, and a test completely destroyed SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule back in April.
Despite the efforts, Fishman is still optimistic. He said, “I think 20 years from now we will look back in this way as we look back on 1995 in the digital age.”
