JOIN USVirgin space, pregnant with potential
The final frontier above the earth may have moved just a bit closer to it in a space of 10 days with two resourceful men breaching it in a flash and returning to the planet, safe and fine. Neither Richard Branson nor Jeff Bezos came back trailing such clouds of glory as Yuri Gagarin or Alan Shepard did. But the two short flights that the two took could mean big leaps for tourism or other enterprises in times to come. Every great business starts as a flight of imagination into virgin territories. Branson and Bezos are hard-boiled businessmen who would not build castles in thin air, but both are daring enough to take the long shot into the future and wait for it to hit home in a dollar shower.
There are differences between the carriers, methods, claims and the long-term aims of the two. Branson travelled in a space plane, went above the 50-mile line which is the edge of space by some readings, and returned in 59 minutes. Bezos blasted off in a capsule mounted on a rocket, rose 12 miles above the Branson line and returned in 10 minutes.
Both realised that weight is an illusion that flesh and bones are prone to on earth, and it is this experience of freedom from mortal coils that both would take to the market. There are few on earth who wouldn’t have dreamt of a brush with the Great Beyond and of a loss of being into nothingness. Space is the elemental state before things took shape, and the two men are now offering an escape from the human condition into the terrible beauty of the vast void for a few fleeting surreal minutes, subject to terms and conditions.
The conditions are spelt out in terms of millions of dollars but there will be many who will not be daunted by the bill for a piece of otherworld adventure. The ethics and economics of it may be debated but it is the ambition to go beyond the bound and the technology that aids it that will dominate the debate. The age of space tourism has been ushered in. The origin of new eras is in virgin moments, and there is space out there for X, Y and Z. Bezos is thinking beyond tourism and has plans to set up human colonies in space. The plan is still the stuff of science fiction, but he may have had a quick look at the real estate on his trip. Humans will need an alternative home if things go wrong here on account of a wayward meteor, a determined virus, or a move of our own nuclear finger. No harm in keeping some options open.