Sunday 11 July 2021, for us Italians, it will go to the news like that of the Italy England final or the Davis Cup final, in which for the first time an athlete brings the flag to the most famous tennis court in the world.
First steps in space tourism
But on the other side of the ocean an at least curious and unusual challenge is being played between the two billionaires, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the richest man in the world today valued at 211 billion. A challenge that, however, hides the real beginning of space tourism, a sector that, it is thought, will be in great expansion for the next 20 years with prices, which today are stellar, in any case decreasing and ever greater opportunities for suborbital flight, within the first 100 kilometers from the earth’s soil.
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Returning to the challenge between the two billionaires, they both want to go first into space with a vehicle produced by one of their industries, a particular not just given, that there have now been a small handful of so-called space tourists, but all have gone to International space station with the Americans or the Russians.
Fight for the primacy
The contest is without holds barred. Bezos about a month ago had set the first sub-orbital flight with his Blue Shepard rocket and shuttle to July 20 this year, a historic date since it recalls the Apollo 11 mission that brought the first men on our satellite in 1969 and he had announced that he too would be among the passengers. Branson, who since 2004 aspires to be the first man to take tourists into space by private means, immediately reacted and, acting like hell, managed, on Friday 9 July, to wrest the powerful American aviation body from the allowed to take off before Bezos, on 11 July next, evidently with the idea of going down in history as the first 100% space tourist. Eventually history would be interested in writing it down.
Twenty kilometers from “real” space
The thing is curious because, however the press offices and the media around the world say and embrace, Branson’s wonderful rocket plane, the SpaceShipTwo, brought up by the great plane The white Knight, the White Knight, will not be able to go further. the 80 kilometers from Earth. Mind you, a great height and then from there in free fall for many tens of seconds will make the six almost astronauts inside it experience, in addition to the priceless view of the Earth from space, also the absence of gravity.