reportage
STARSHIPS ARE MEANT TO FLY Space tourism has existed since the 2000s, with several missions organized by Virginia-based company Space Adventures reaching the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. However, times are changing as private companies are increasingly becoming part of this lucrative business, which creates opportunities beyond imagination.
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n the 2nd of June 2021, Houstonbased Axiom Space will fly three additional crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Space X’s Crew Dragon capsule. It is not the first cooperation between the two companies, though : Axiom has already booked one confirmed Crew Dragon flight to the orbiting lab located on the International Space Station. This mission will launch no earlier than January 2022. This progressive privatization of space is something revolutionary in
mankind’s history and has become known to the public under the term of “New Space”. This expression means that space conquest is not the monopoly of States and public institutions anymore, as it tends to involve more and more new actors. NASA’s decision to entrust Space X’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with the task of ensuring the replacement of the International Space Station’s crew is a decisive token towards this evolution. This shift reinvents the traditional conception of space, which has been until recently restricted to tasks such
