| Race to be the First Irishman in Space
By Ronan McGreevy
If your wallet can stretch to it, space travel is just around the
corner. Ronan McGreevy reveals how the competition is growing to be the
very first Irishman in space.
You may remember Michael Collins. No, not the Irish revolutionary figure
who was tragically killed at Beal na mBlath, but the astronaut of the same
name.
Michael Collins was the Pete Best of the moon landings. While Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin were becoming the first human beings to set foot on another
world, Collins was stoically orbiting the moon in the lunar module, so near
and yet so far from immortality.
Nevertheless, it did not stop Bertie Ahern from claiming on his website
a couple of years ago that Michael Collins was the first Irishman in space.
The claim brought a swift riposte from NASA. It pointed out that the
only thing Michael Collins had in common with The Big Fella was his name
and not his nationality.
We Irish have got everywhere, but 44 years after Yuri Gagarin first circled
the earth, space remains the final frontier for us, though not for much
longer it would appear.
Last week Limerick man Cyril Bennis declared his intention to become
the first Irishman in space and is dedicating the rest of his life to achieve
that goal.
He has already experienced weightlessness and hopes to raise the money
to grab a seat on board Space Adventures sub-orbital vessel which is due
to lift off in two years time.
Space Adventures is also planning to take tourists round the moon if
you have £55 million to spare, but Mr Bennis, who was once the Lord Mayor
of Stratford-upon-Avon, is hoping for a short spin into space for a mere
£100,000.
He faces stern competition, though, from two of Ireland’s best known
businessman. The battle to be the first Irishman on board Sir Richard Branson’s
Virgin Galactica has led to an unseemly — but delightful for the rest of
us — row between Bill Cullen and Tom Higgins.
Cullen, the author of It’s a Long Way from Penny Apples and the owner
of the Renault Ireland dealer franchise, claims he was the very first to
pay the $200,000 (£110,000) for a place on the inaugural flight on SpaceShipTwo
which is due to go into service in 2008.
But Tom Higgins, the owner of the premium call line Irish Psychics Live,
says he has signed a contract with Virgin to be the first Irish astronaut.
He has even trademarked the phrase “first Irish astronaut” — a claim as
dubious as his phone lines which charge £1.60 a minute for “psychic” advice.
Regardless of who is the first — and most people will be rooting for
Cyril Bennis — our own mini space-race demonstrates that there are still
people out there mesmerised by the dream of becoming an astronaut despite
the risks involved.
This is despite the collective failure of nerve, especially among the
American public, following the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters
which has only been slightly mitigated by the recent success of the Discovery
mission.
The public wonder if the loss of life is worth it. After all, aside from
Teflon, what has space travel ever done for us?
There was a great deal of scepticism when President Bush announced plans
last year to go back to the moon as a prelude to sending a manned mission
to Mars by about 2025. Nearly 60 per cent of Americans oppose such a mission
mostly on the grounds of cost.
The best estimates range between $170 billion and $500 billion, the discrepancies
in the figures showing the level of uncertainty involved.
Could the money be better spent on other things? With all the poverty
and misery in the world, do we really need to be sending people on a dangerous
mission with no tangible benefits for mankind in general?
Such a flawed analysis is based on the belief that it is a zero-sum game
— that somehow investment in space programs is taking food and medicines
away from those who need it most.
It’s a familiar canard which was dealt with thoroughly by NASA’s Administrator
Michael Griffin in an interview last week. He described it as the cosmic
equivalent of the “when have you stopped beating your wife” question.
He pointed out that, though the sums involved are huge, NASA will still
only be spending about five per cent of the total US military budget annually.
Indeed, the entire Apollo space program cost less than what was spent in
Vietnam in a single year.
A manned mission to Mars represents the same technological challenge
for this century that putting a man on the moon did in the 20th century.
The moon landings were mankind’s greatest technological achievement.
It wasn’t just the culmination of nine years of American scientific endeavour,
but would not have been achieved without the brilliance of generations of
scientists from Hipparchus, the founder of trigonometry, through Newton,
Copernicus and Einstein.
Right now, NASA’s manned flight program is in serious trouble. The next
shuttle mission is not due for at least another six months as engineers
try to fix the problem with falling debris. If NASA are worried about sending
a craft 300 kilometres up into the atmosphere, what are the chances of a
300 million kilometre trip to Mars?
Scientists estimate that the chances of another fatal Shuttle accident
are about a hundred to one, huge odds in our risk-averse culture, but there
remains no shortage of volunteers.
The reasons why are obvious. It’s the same reason that St Brendan, Christopher
Columbus, Captain James Cook, Ferdinand de Magellan, Edmund Hilary, Roald
Amundsen risked even greater peril.
We’ll always be wondering what’s around the corner, over the ocean, up
to the highest mountain, at the furthest end of the earth — it’s in our
nature.
And it’s for that same reason that Cyril Bennis, Bill Cullen and Tom
Higgins want to become the first Irishmen in space.
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