"The damage to the space tourism industry will only be in the short term, it is clear to everyone that there is a risk in technological developments"

This is what Dr. Omri Vandel from the Rakah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University says in an interview with the website Hedan following the crash of Virgin Galactic's Spaceship-2 spacecraft.

The damage to the space tourism industry will only be in the short term, says Dr. Omri Vandel from the Rakah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University in an interview with the website Hedaan following the crash of Virgin Galactic's Spaceship-2 spacecraft last Friday.

"Hope didn't crash, these things happen. The rosy picture that was presented at the beginning made us forget that this is a significant move with quite a few risks. It's a matter of time until the first ship reaches space, and it's also a matter of time until one of these crashes."

In response to the question of the science site, whether this will affect the ability of Branson and some competitors less famous than him to return to space tourism activity, Wendel says: "I don't think it will have any more impact than it did for much more difficult events such as the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters. The only fallout is a short-term fallout. It's likely that some people who wanted to fly will cancel their reservation, but many will be willing to take the The risk despite what happened."

In the same topic on the science website:

• Tourist spaceship Spaceship-2: no second chance for landing * Branson: the project will continue
• Updates from the crash site of the spaceship-2 tourist spacecraft
• Second space accident in a week, one dead and one injured in the crashes of Virgin's Spaceship-2 spacecraft planned to fly space tourists

"Everyone knows that in technological development there are disasters. As soon as it is a flight, and millionaires are involved in it, it could be expected that it is not a smooth process because they are developing innovative techniques under time pressure. It should be remembered that Virgin Galactic postponed the first commercial launch date many times. In light of this, it is safe There is pressure on the developers in the company to reach the finished product, just as at the time there was pressure to launch the Challenger and they did not wait for suitable weather and this was the direct cause of the accident We don't know what the cause of the accident is. There are speculations, but the cause will become clear and the company will announce that it will take care of the root of the problem and it will not repeat itself, the impact will be small."

Will public opinion be open to such flights after the disaster?

"From a social point of view, there will always be those who will say that it is unethical, and unfair that people who have money invest it in the narrow private interest and not contribute to higher goals or even to other areas of space exploration. This is the nature of the capitalist economy - those who have money do what they want with it "Flying in a spaceship is no more or less legitimate than maintaining a cruise ship, but it is something new."

The scientist: The flights offered by Virgin are suborbital, that is, takeoff and descent, there are companies that are developing flights to orbit, including hotels in space, how will the accident affect them?

Prof. Wendel: "On flights for a few minutes, the passengers get a taste of space, they can't even see the whole Earth from above because the height is not enough. It's quite similar to what the shuttle pilots saw and the crew members on the International Space Station see today, except for the duration. Hotels in space They are perhaps an issue for the distant future. The technology for a suborbital space plane is at hand, more significant flights - to orbit around the Earth and certainly beyond it, will be much more Expensive and therefore only a few people will be able to afford it. But it's a fact that there are people who sign up and compete to get to Mars without the possibility of coming back. There are enough people who will agree to go on a one-way trip. They will not agree to fly into space, and 99% of the remaining will not agree to fly on a one-way flight, for sure there will be volunteers.

Indeed, how about the Mars One project offering a one-way flight?

"As a scientist, I think the project is quite unnecessary because everything we know about Mars we can obtain using unmanned spacecraft and we have been doing this for 50 years. The main thing that has not yet been done was to return a soil sample from Mars to Earth so that it can be analyzed and there is also a plan for this For the coming years, which has been postponed due to budgetary considerations and is currently intended for 2020 with the existing technology. To do the same operation with humans: a manned flight Mars and returning the astronauts to peace is a much more expensive matter, if they wanted to establish colonies on the moon, which is much easier to establish a supply network for scientific.