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Passenger flights in space, tourist hotels on the moon and factories to export dirty industries from Earth. American billionaire Jeff Bezos has very specific plans for the future.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is making a radical proposal: that all of the heavy industry that pollutes the Earth be taken into space. Therefore, our planet will remain only a place for living, as well as for light and clean production. This Bezos proposal is not a joke, but it is completely serious, although it could be realized in 30, 40 or 50 years.
“We believe that we will become an interplanetary society,” said Mehak Sarang, a researcher at Harvard University in Boston who studies space economics.
“When the cost of space travel is lower, humanity will be able to produce much of the drugs it needs in weightless conditions, especially those drugs with crystalline structures that cannot be produced on Earth,” experts say.
Satellite costs have already been cut in half
And the cost of space travel is already falling. According to NASA, in the last five years alone, the cost of sending satellites has been cut in half. Meanwhile, there are 14 companies already competing with each other. In the United States alone, an average of one missile is fired per week.
“Our goal is to commercialize our orbit,” said former NASA chief Jim Breidenstein, who was appointed by Donald Trump to modernize NASA and prepare flights to the Moon and Mars.
Around 5,700 satellites orbit the Earth. Twice are obsolete and have become space debris. “The satellite industry has a turnover of nearly $ 400 billion,” Sarang said. Satellites have long been a part of everyday life, but the biggest boost is expected to come from space tourism. And that means that even before there are factories in space, hotels will appear there, ”predicts the Boston researcher.
Several companies are already planning stellar trips, Axiom being the most advanced. Company director Michael Suffradini wants to take the first group of tourists to the International Space Station ISS in the spring of 2022. The trip is expected to last eight days. The Crew Dragon spaceship has been chartered for this purpose. Ticket price: $ 55 million per person.
The ship’s guide and commander will be Michael Lopez-Allegria, who has been to space with NASA several times and is confident that traveling around the Earth will become commonplace.
Hotel among the stars
Michael Suffradini also has a lot of experience: he was the manager of the International Space Station ISS. His plan is to start with a hotel that offers seven beds for guests: tourists, scientists, construction workers. The hotel will feature a spectacular glass observation deck, laboratories and other workplaces that can be rented for a limited time, and factories will be established later.
“There are optical cables that are 100 times more efficient if they are made without weight,” says Suffradini. They were so good that they could carry even infrared light.
“The point is not to announce what plans we have for space and then start building the right infrastructure. It’s working exactly the other way around: My generation’s job is to build this infrastructure, build the path to space. And then absolutely incredible things will happen. there, “Bezos predicted.
The moon is a prominent destination
Moving the economic living space a few hundred kilometers above the Earth is the first step in this regard. The next one has long been planned: the construction of an economic zone on the moon.
More recently, an unmanned Chinese spacecraft brought rock samples from the moon. The US goals are more ambitious: “In 2024, we will step on the moon to stay there,” said then-NASA chief Breidenstein in 2019, adding: “In 2009, we tested for the first time that there are hundreds of millions of tons of water. frost. at the south pole of the moon. “
This water can be used to produce hydrogen and thus as rocket fuel. Last but not least, the moon is believed to have large amounts of precious metals and rare soils, which are extremely important to the electronics industry.
Globalization without borders
“We come in peace, for the good of humanity,” said American astronaut Neil Armstrong when he first landed on the moon in 1969. The main international treaty for the peaceful use of space dates back to 1967. At that time, no one he thought about commercial space travel, and they will hide great potential for conflict in the future.
70 years ago, the race in space was between two nations and two different political systems. It was about supremacy and international fame. Today we are talking about something completely different: globalization, which even extends to space. This is no longer “another world”, but part of our world, part of a huge market of the future.
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