theGIST Issue 12

Science in the Spotlight
The Modern
Space Race
Miriam explores the new space
race to the moon and beyond.
Space races are exciting, there's
no denying it. However, unlike the
iconic space race of old between
Cold War rivals, a slew of billionaires
are vying to come out on top
of this new competition. With 2019
marking 50 years since the Apollo
moon landing, nothing seems to
have captured public attention
more than this historic event. Having
said that, the space sector is
currently undergoing a renaissance.
In this era, coined "New Space"
[1], NASA has obtained a reduced
role. It's not countries that will be
sector leaders but business leaders
instead. And in the near future, it
may well be that anyone with a big
enough chequebook can become a
space tourist [2]. In the golden age
of spaceflight, widely considered to
be the Apollo era, it would be difficult
to imagine that NASA's supremacy
would be diminished.
However, with strict budget cuts and
private companies like SpaceX
showing that they can launch rockets
as well, the tides are changing
[3].
You might think that a space trip
is the top answer to a billionaire's
mid-life crisis. Nevertheless, these
projects have been in the pipeline
for many years and when they have
that much spare cash to burn, who
could blame them [4]?
Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and
Jeff Bezos are together pushing
boundaries with, to all appearances,
an unlimited budget. But
what goal are these billionaires trying
to attain? Jeff Bezos, the
founder of Amazon, was the first to
emerge onto the private scene with
his company Blue Origin in 2000.
The company believes that "in order
to preserve Earth, our home, for our
grandchildren's grandchildren, we
must go to space to tap its unlimited
resources and energy" [5].
Blue Origin is well known for their
work developing the New Shepard
rocket, named after Mercury astronaut
Alan Shepard. New Shepard is
a suborbital rocket that travels high
enough to reach the edge of outer
space without having the energy to
achieve orbit. This incorporates a
crew capsule with the aim of carrying
future paying customers for
suborbital space tourism. Decembber
11th of 2019 marked New
Shepard's sixth space flight. It has
carried numerous experiments over
its multiple missions [6].
Elon Musk's SpaceX came to light
just two years after Blue Origin. His
company aims to "revolutionize
space technology, with the ultimate
goal of enabling people to live on
other planets". In 2010, they became
the first private company able
to return a spacecraft from a low
Earth orbit. Since then they have
gained global recognition for their
achievements. They were the creators
of the Dragon spacecraft which
delivered cargo to and from the International
Space Station successfully.
Commercially, this spacecraft
was the first of its kind. In recent
years, they began launching their
Falcon Heavy, "the world's most
powerful operational rocket" [7].
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic
is attempting to be the first to offer
commercial human spaceflight.
Their mission involves "using space
for good" by trying to open up space
to everyone [8]. However, current
attempts have not been without
agony. Five years ago VSS Enterprise
scattered pieces of itself over
the Mojave Desert during a test
flight. The result was the death of
the co-pilot, a father of two [9]. This
is a sobering reality of spaceflight
but something astronauts and
space sector employees understand
as a risk of the job.
Years on, they have regrouped.
As the company prepares for commercial
flights, it has been able to
raise $450 million by going public
on the New York Stock Exchange.
They haven't given a date for their
first planned commercial flight, but
it's presumed that it will be sometime
in 2020. Their crews have, on
previous test flights, entered space
twice. In anticipation of commercial
www.the-GIST.org