Even Italy in space tourism, agreement with Virgin Galactic but check-in is still closed

Italy is also preparing for space tourism. After the front page launches of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, our country is also warming up its engines for a made in Italy tourism in orbit. And, according to what Adnkronos learns from sources close to the dossier, the first steps are already being taken. The Italian Space Agency, in fact, has already moved in this direction for some time and since 2018 it has begun to organize tourist launches from the Italian territory by entering into an agreement with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic which, on 11 July last, became the first ‘space tourist’ in history to fly over the Karman line. With this agreement, ASI, also through its subsidiary Altec, is planning the first Italian tourist space flight and the identified launch base is the future Grottaglie spaceport, in Puglia. But the check-in is not yet open. In truth, there is still no “passenger list” because, at the moment, the well-informed have not seen “any scum to book a seat or buy a ticket”. Yet there are those who assure that “the road has opened, even if there is still a little way to go”. To see a tricolor ‘boarding pass’ for a journey into space “there is a whole regulatory part to be fixed”. It also serves as a “process” to carry out a tourist launch from our territory. And last but not least, the port area of ​​Grottaglie “is to be consolidated”. But once the bureaucratic obstacle has been solved, is the Italian space system ready for the business of tourism in orbit? To understand the ‘state of the art’, Adnkronos reached by phone in Dubai – where it is for the Expo 2020 Space Week – the CEO of Argotec, David Avino, to probe with him – who brought on the Iss the first space coffee machine – if we’re ready for a tricolor vacation in microgravity. “In Italy we have the entire supply chain to think about a ‘space holiday’: we have systems for comfort, advanced space technologies, modules for staying in orbit” says David Avino. And the CEO of Argotec, born in 2008 in Turin and today a strong player in the Italian space, is used to ‘flying high’. In fact, with his teams, Avino also brought the first gourmet meals to the International Space Station by producing “space food – also suitable for weightlessness – with made in Italy recipes by chef Stefano Polato, manager of the Turin laboratory”. “However, we shouldn’t stop and think about a suborbital flight lasting a few minutes: we should think about a ‘space tourist vacation’ even for a few days” observes Avino who with Argotec is preparing the launch, on November 24th, of LiciaCube, a satellite of small size that will go into deep space. The small satellite will be an object completely built in Italy that will go further into space, a project coordinated by ASI but carried out by Argotec: just an example of those business skills in our country that lead us to look further. “Suborbital space travel is highly advertised but they are flights that last a few minutes between going and returning to Earth. They are very beautiful, they show our Earth from above, they are exciting but it ends here” comments David Avino. “What we are planning to do instead is to build, in the near future, colonies outside our planet – starting with the Moon – and I see this as one of the options for the next 10 years”. An option “which opens totally different perspectives from a suborbital flight and which will also bring important technological fallout for the quality of life on Earth” cuts short the Argotec CEO who does not consider it surreal to imagine “space hotels for tourists in orbit on private inhabited stations , space residences’ for the explorers of the future, men and women who, in addition to professional astronauts, “will inhabit space and” will be the ‘workers of mining’, of mines in space, as well as the engineers and technicians of terrestrial oil platforms “. In looking beyond the Earth, Avino finally indicates that “all these people will need to live in space comfortably. And this will have enormous repercussions: from the construction of spatial environments in which to live, a theme on which we are already moving, to cooking. in space to systems for washing in microgravity where it is impossible to take a shower like on Earth “. (by Andreana d’Aquino)