Space Travel: Then and Now

Entrepreneur, billionaire, Richard Branson reached sub-orbit last week in his new SpaceShipTwo. The trip marks his company, Virgin Galactic’s first entry into sub-orbit and showcases a remarkable new engineering feat, using a twin-fuselage booster plane at take off.

The company sees this as a landmark achievement in space travel with the potential of opening the world to space tourism.

Although Branson’s flight is impressive, it’s not the first time we’ve made it into orbit or sub-orbit. The famous space race started between the USA and the Soviet Union in the 1950’s. In 1961 The Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit and in the same year the US achieved this with Alan Shepard. John Glenn followed soon after, orbiting the Earth three times in 1962.

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The space race came to a definitive conclusion in 1969, when US astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon.

Since then, NASA has continued exploring space, sending probes to every planet in our solar system, including the dwarf planet, Pluto. It has landed four rovers on Mars, the last of which, Curiosity, is still collecting data from craters today.

Currently, space tourism is prohibitively expensive but as more companies enter the market the price will likely decrease. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is planning a trip in the near future and many others are likely to follow.

One day we might all see space as Gagarin and Shepard did but for now it’s just the dream of billionaires.

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