At 12:23 p.m. EDT on September 11, three new humans have been launched into space.
Just a day earlier, on September 10, four commercial astronauts have launched into space.
With that, a total of – and unprecedented – 19 people are in space right now:
12 on the International Space Station, 3 on the Chinese Space Station, and the 4 launched on a SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience capsule/spacecraft.
On Tuesday, I mentioned the number of 16 humans in space to someone, an executive in the space industry, and he responded: “Good, now let’s aim for 1600 [people in space at once]!”
1600 people against a global population of 8 billion is not a lot of people – but we’re not there yet to have that many in space at once.
Indeed, only 700-something people have been to space in the history of all of humanity.
In fact, with Tuesday’s launch of mission called Polaris Dawn, an all-civilian crew of four:
- Scott Poteet became number 708
- Sarah Gillis, number 709
- Anna Menon, number 710
- (Jared Isaacman, commander of, and founder of this mission is number 591 as he already flew to space in 2021 with the Inspiration4 mission)
From Wednesday’s launch, the three men launched have also already been to space, hence, American astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner are numbers respectively, 436, 556 and 579.
I don’t know exactly what their experience will be like, but one thing I’m almost certain of, is that they will come back to Earth changed.
There are now different types of astronauts, the traditional ones: trained by a government agency, like NASA or ESA or JAXA, or CSA, and going to space for a specific mission.
And relatively newly – with the emerging suborbital branch of the space industry – a new class of astronauts who are not professionally trained, (the specific training varies by individual and what they choose to personally experience), who get to go to space for a short ride, a hop in space – either as tourists or as researchers - and still get to experience the awe of the ride as a whole, and more importantly, the incredible views of the Earth from above.
But Jared, Scott, Sarah, and Anna, with their Polaris Dawn mission are in a class of their own: Already three days-into their mission, they have reached an orbit higher in altitude than has even been done before, except for the Apollo astronauts, and just earlier today (September 12), the first ever commercial spacewalk was done successfully by two of the crew, and with epic, sci-fi-like photos that are just stunning and mindboggling.
The Polaris Dawn crew have not been trained by some government agency as traditionally that would be the case. But you can be sure they have had the adequate and specific training for what their mission entails.
Whether a career astronaut or commercial astronauts though, one thing they all have in common is that they belong to a small club of humans against the rest of humanity, who got to leave our planet for some time, experience weightlessness, and see the Earth from above, surrounded by the vastness of space.
That has got to change a person!
The space industry and its various missions provide many benefits to life on Earth, mainly of all the science that gets done in an un-earthly environment, and where experts in their respective fields can advance their science with experiments and a perspective outside of their regular labs.
But for a person to be in space is something so unique and special to the senses, and to the mind especially, as a human experience and of a contrast to all we’ve even known from life on Earth.
From the ‘60s with the beginning of the Space Age and throughout the decades, just about every single astronaut has spoken about that otherworldly, one-of-a-kind experience that brought on a perspective change within them and a newfound appreciation for life on Earth.
So, in that context, the benefits of space exploration with an individual involved is about this mindset shift experienced only once in space; that new understanding of the planet’s delicate nature, or humanities vulnerability, our globe being borderless and seeming tiny against the vastness surrounding us.
May be corny, but we are united together on Earth, and we just must do the best we can everyday to make life on Earth good, healthy, kind and equal.
Here on Earth, we take it all for granted. Nature’s nurture, gravity, the chemistry and physics that allows us to live as we do. We are used to the regular sights: trees that are taller than us, grass or pebbles at our feet, the Sun above bright and warming us, the Moon shining in the darkness in what we call nighttime – it’s all common sense to us, and what is our normal.
It’s very different out there in space, even with just 100 kilometers in altitude (referred to as the Karman line, the conventional definition of the edge of space). The sights and views are not anything we are used to seeing as in the human experience (except from a screen, but obviously not the same).
Now however, with all the newly become astronauts of late, especially with suborbital spaceflights provided by companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, more and more every-day people get to see those one-of-a-kind views – and that’s a good thing for humanity!
Those spaceflights however, specifically the part of being weightless in space, is a short 4-minutes-hover. Yet that brief time brings so much excitement and a new way of seeing the world.
So, imagine being out there longer!
Just like on Earth we take the way we live for granted because we were in it from our birth and don’t know any other way, just image how much time it would take to be out there in space and absorb the immensity of that experience of being.
Of all the 700-something humans that have been to space, I doubt anyone came back not feeling a profoundly new appreciation for our planet and everything in it. At the minimum, practiced more kindness with every new person they’ve met since their time in space.
I personally have had the privileged to meet several former NASA astronauts, and they are some of the humblest people. They welcome your questions and are eager to talk about their experience (not about them), about our planet from space and its magnificence, and many since work with companies and organizations with a mission to help make this world good, healthy and sustainable.
On a human experience level, that’s what the benefits of being in space brings to Earth.
True, we can’t all go to space, not even a small percentage of the global population, not yet.
But our world as we know it now, with all the uncertainties, wars and conflicts raging, tribe-like mindsets and cruelty to fellow humans, and even democracy’s fragility, could really use a profound experience filled with awe, wonder and humility, and spacefaring seem to deeply ingrain these lessons within every traveler.
Until spaceflights with humans become more common, we need to find the inspiration in all those current missions and see how innovation (any tech-for-good) is uplifting, future-minded, good for humanity. Future generations are dependent on what we do now.
“Per aspera ad astra”.
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