The first female space tourist, Iranian-American engineer Anousheh Ansari, says that she did not particularly like the narrative about the Blue Origin mission in which singer Katy Perry or journalist Gayle King participated, and advocates for a less elitist conception of space, since "it belongs to all of us."
During an interview with EFE at the Starmus Festival in La Palma, Ansari has questioned the forms and publicity surrounding that specific mission of Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, which had the particularity of being the first collective space mission composed only of women (the first solo mission was that of the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963), and regrets that other stories of crew members of that ship have gone unnoticed.
"There were incredible, inspiring, and resilient stories like -Amanda- Nguyen's, which we should learn about," says Ansari regarding the bioastronautics researcher and activist against discrimination towards Asians.
In the opinion of the engineer, who spent almost eleven days in space in 2006, when space exploration is shown as a type of travel typical of the elites, interest in space is limited, something she regrets because "the future of humanity is in space."
Send pollution into space
For Ansari, there is a world of possibilities to make the planet more sustainable if, for example, much of the pollution or the need to create materials is moved into space.
"After all, we live on a planet. It's not like we're separate from space, we're part of it, we're in it, and we must study how we can use the resources it offers us sustainably to improve life on Earth. And for that, public-private collaboration is needed," reflects the engineer.
She acknowledges that these types of solutions to divert pollution into space are still very expensive, but that costs can go down, as has happened in recent years with suborbital flights like those of Blue Origin, which allow you to spend between three and five minutes in zero gravity, experiencing space.
"Costs will go down over the next decade, so that more people can experience this life-changing effect," says Ansari, who points out that the next big challenge is to continue reducing the costs of the technology needed to make these suborbital flights more accessible.
"We need new technologies, new launch systems, new propulsion systems, everything less expensive," she summarizes.
Address the militarization of space
Anousheh Ansari also perceives several regulatory challenges in areas of space exploration such as access to space and its defense.
"I hope we can have a regulatory model that can adequately address the defense and militarization of space, but from a humanistic perspective so that it is not just one nation or one company that benefits from access to space resources," she says.
Asked about the role of NASA versus private companies, at a time when the Donald Trump administration has made significant cuts in the United States' aerospace agency, Ansari is clear that NASA must continue to play a leading role in the areas of pure research, with public funds, for the benefit of humanity, in an ecosystem in which private companies will always concentrate where there is business.
Could that provoke a potential conflict in which commercial interests outweigh scientific and exploratory ones? Ansari believes not and sees not conflict but "challenges" to clarify how the benefits of access to space resources will be distributed among all nations.
"Space can be a source of much of the materials we need in the future. It can be a place of manufacturing. Limiting its access to smaller countries or certain smaller companies could limit those benefits," she summarizes.
About the next big advances, some notes: "There are no reasons that prevent us from developing new, lighter materials with the microgravity of space, in addition to new medicines and proteins," exemplifies Ansari, convinced that all this will make life on Earth better, easier, and more sustainable.
