“It’s the new space economy”recognizes the specialist in space news at the Cité de l’espace in Toulouse, Olivier Sanguy, on Friday April 8 on franceinfo, while the very first entirely private flight to the International Space Station (ISS) takes off today at 5 p.m. , Paris time.
franceinfo: Is it serious to spend so many resources to send rich tourists into orbit?
Olivier Sanguy: It is serious in any case for the private American company which sells the service, which is a company based in Houston moreover, which is called Axiom Space, and it calls on SpaceX for the transport. This is the new space economy. There are three entrepreneurs who are also presented as philanthropists because they are going to leave with 25 scientific experiments, so they add a side ‘we also do this for humanity’. In space, there are classic experiments to be done, such as medical experiments, so they will continue what has already been done. You should also know that they have been training for a year. It’s not quite tourism in the sense that we understand it. It’s more like going to climb Everest, for example. There is real training to be done.
These non-professional space travelers will go to the International Space Station (ISS). Is this a first for non-astronauts?
This is the great novelty on the American side, but orbital space tourism has been a reality since 2001, it was the Russians who inaugurated it with the American Dennis Tito, who had paid to go on a Soyuz, stay a week in the ISS and come back. Afterwards, there were even more, about nine in total, who made that trip via the Russians. This is the first tourist mission – we will use this term to simplify – on the American side, but you should know that the company Axiom Space has great ambitions since it has signed with NASA to add a private module to the Station international space from 2024-2025. This module is not made in the USA. It is manufactured in Europe, more precisely in Italy, in Turin, in the Franco-Italian company Thales Alenia Space.
NASA intends to maintain the ISS only until 2030 and then hand over to private actors. So the future of space is tourism?
In any case, this is what is taking shape. NASA plans, after 2030, to no longer maintain a station itself, but to be a client of several private stations. And Axiom Space intends, after putting in a first module, to add others until this embryo station becomes independent. And NASA, perhaps the European Space Agency and other agencies will then be customers of these private stations. You should know that the Blue Origin group, that is to say Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon, also has a project. Will it really take root? We’ll see, because already in the 1980s there were space commercialization projects, but that stopped.