The final frontier: Democratising space

Space, as Star Trek continues to inform us, is indeed the final frontier. For long, the idea of space colonies was in the realm of science fiction. Now, it is more a question of when, rather than if, although the when is still several decades in the future. Time doesn’t just work differently in space, it works differently when it comes to anything concerning space. On Sunday, nearly two decades after a trio of moneyed entrepreneurs (separately) promised the democratisation of space, the first of them delivered it.

From the rather aptly named Truth or Consequences, a city in New Mexico, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launched a plane carrying its VSS Unity spacecraft for a 15-minute flight to the edge of space. There were two pilots, Mr Branson, and three other passengers. For some time, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, space was the most crowded it has been, counting those aboard the International Space Station, and the Chinese Taikonauts in orbit in that country’s Tianhe space station – and it will get even more so. Sure, the

Virgin spaceflight was just to the edge of space, just as those later this year by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s Space X will be. But by next year, commercial space tourism may become a reality, with people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few minutes of weightlessness and a glimpse of the blue orb.

The ramifications of the democratisation of space, the fact that just about anyone with the resources can take a trip to space, and the entry of the private sector into an area dominated by governments will become clear over time. 2021 may mark an important milestone in humankind’s effort to explore space, and then colonise it.