Dawn of space tourism

Amid the darkest hour of the new millennium, with hundreds of millions of jobs gone, a recession staring, and a pandemic that has claimed over 3.71 lakh lives, Elon Musk’s frontier-opening space flight gives us reason to cheer. With the blastoff and docking of Crew Dragon carrying Nasa astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch humans into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments — Russia, the United States and China. Musk has beaten rivals Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and Paul Allen (Stratolaunch Systems) to win this race. The milestone flight, which is being spoken of as the harbinger of commercial space travel, also marked the first time that American astronauts have flown from US soil since 2011. It sparked off an amusing verbal duel between Musk and Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian space chief. The trampoline is working, Musk is said to have quipped, responding to Rogozin’s earlier predictions about Washington having to send astronauts to the ISS using one. Rogozin grimly acknowledged his jibe. So what’s next on the cards? A new market for space tourism? Musk has already picked his passenger, Yusaku Maezawa, for the moon-loop trip SpaceX is working on and has plans for a 2024 crewed flight to Mars. Eric Anderson’s Space Adventures, too, has announced a circumlunar mission, with the price per passenger fixed at $100 million. Though few will be able to afford such a trip, will this lead to an eventual “colonising” of planets and satellites? It is way too early, but such explorations will surely aid scientific research. In the Indian context, it does make sense to get the corporate sector to invest in space projects, with able support from Isro, in the form of public-private partnerships, leaving the government free to use its limited resources to shore up the economy and for welfare.