SPACE isn’t just for scientists and celebs – it’ll be a hot holiday destination and will offer a shortcut to slash flight times too.
They’re just some of the predictions from British space hero Tim Peake, who sat down with The Sun for a chat about our off-Earth future.
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Tim, 53, spent about 186 days in space, returning from the ISS on June 18, 2016.
But when humans start making the first trips to Mars in the next decade or so, they’ll be in space for a lot longer – potentially for three years.
It sounds nightmarish, but Tim says we’ve done it all before, hundreds of years ago.
“A lot of people today forget about what we used to do in terms of exploration, the hardships, the torture, the kind of risk that was taken,” Tim told The Sun at Goodwood Festival of Speed’s Future Lab earlier this month.
“And in the early 1800s, nothing was thought about disappearing off on a three year expedition.
“That was pretty standard if you were in the Royal Navy. You say goodbye to your family and your mum.
“You say goodbye. You don’t really know where you’re going or what you’re going to be doing, but you’re just going to be away for a long time.
“So when I talk to people about in the mid 2030s, we’re going to be on a three year mission to Mars and they kind of have this shock and horror that, well, that’s so long, you’ll never get people to go away for that long.
“Well, you will. We’ve done this before.
“It’s only in the last 150 years that it hasn’t been normal to have a three year expedition away, finding new lands and discovering new things.
“And we’re going to kind of go back into that kind of mindset. It’s just that it won’t be on Earth. It will be out into space.”
Nasa hopes to make manned trips to Mars as soon as the 2030s, although no firm date has been set.
But whenever those first visits happen, the astronauts will likely be a lot more comfortable than explorers of the past.
“The levels of resilience and self-sufficiency they needed was unbelievable. I mean, again, when we do Mars, the crew will have enough food, they’ll have enough water, they’ll have enough life support,” Tim said.
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He continued: “We’ve mapped the surface, we’ll have habitation modules for them.
“So it’ll probably be a lot more comfortable than it would be setting off on endurance or HMS Wager back in the day.”
SPACE STAYS
For now, going to space is largely the preserve of professional astronauts, celebs and the ultra-wealthy.
But in the future, Tim thinks that this will soon change – and Elon Musk is partly to thank.
Tim credits Musk’s company SpaceX with making space travel a lot cheaper.
“They’ve brought the cost of getting to space down so much, which is really exciting.
“Because that opens up whole markets of things you didn’t think were possible because they were cost-prohibitive five or 10 years ago, that are now economically viable.
“So that’s really exciting, but SpaceX is just the Uber that gets you there and back.
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“What’s even more exciting is: now what can you do when you’re up there?”
Tim tells me that space tourism has been around for a long time – but it’s becoming more frequent.
And that’s a trend that will only grow with time.
“It’s part of the democratisation of space,” Tim told The Sun.
“I think fast-forward 100 years and there’ll be an awful lot of people going to space for a variety of different reasons.
“Some for science, some for exploration, some for entertainment, and some for a different holiday.”
Unsurprisingly, Tim reckons that we’d all be better off if we’d taken a trip to space.
He says it gives you a different view of the world – and not just literally.
WHO IS TIM PEAKE?
Here’s what you need to know…
- Major Tim Peake is a British Army officer and astronaut
- He is the first British astronaut with the European Space Agency
- He’s also the sixth Brit to go aboard the International Space Agency
- Peake was born in Chichester, West Sussex in 1972
- In 1990 he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
- In 1992, he joined the Army Air Corps
- Then two years later Peake became a qualified helicopter pilot
- Peake left the army in 2009 to follow his dream of becoming an astronaut
- He beat more than 9,000 applicants for one of six spots on the ESA’s astronaut training programme
- He had to endure a rigorous selection process that tested his intellect and fitness
- Peake was launched to the ISS on December 15, 2015
- In April the next year, he ran the 2016 London Marathon from the ISS treadmill
- And in June 2016, he finally returned to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz descent module
- During his time in space, Peake completed roughly 3,000 orbits of Earth
Picture Credit: Getty Images
“I think it is amazing. The more people that can witness Earth from space – Earth would be a better place. Definitely,” Tim said.
“People would have perhaps have a different perspective when they’re making decisions.
“Having kind of seen how we all share one planet. And it looks fairly remote and isolated from space.”
So your Moon vacation in 2065 won’t just be a relaxing break, but an upgrade for your mind too.
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EARTH, VIA SPACE
Of course, space tourism isn’t the only way rockets will help your holidays.
Tim reckons it’ll make moving around Earth easier too.
Holidays to the Moon will involve blasting off from Earth and landing on the rocky satellite.
But that’s not the only version of going space – you can also take suborbital flights that skim space, and descend back to Earth.
“Some of those missions they’re launching, say, from New Mexico. They’re going up and landing in New Mexico,” Tim explained.
“Having been into space, well, there’s no reason why you couldn’t launch in New Mexico and land in Paris on that same kind of mission.
“And that could be a new form of suborbital transportation that becomes very popular in the future.”
It sounds nightmarishly expensive – and it probably would be at the start.
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But eventually, Tim thinks, we could see the cost come down.
Speaking to the astronaut, I joke that we could see Ryanair-style budget flights that only cost a tenner.
“I mean, if you if you went back to those early 1920s, 1930s transatlantic carriers, you would have found very wealthy people on board traveling in relative luxury,” Tim told me.
“And if you’d have said, you know, in 100 years time, we’re going to have the EasyJets and the Ryanairs – a mass global transportation at the same cost of a train ticket – they would never have believed it.
“So you never know what we can do with future changes in technology.”
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