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Richard Branson made history a few days ago when he became the first space billionaire. Now, famous astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson has expressed doubts whether we can call the place where Branson flew as space.
Prodigy of legendary space scientist Carl Sagar, deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York.
In a recent interview with CNN, deGrasse Tyson said Richard Branson had not been to space. He explained, “First of all, it was suborbital. NASA did it 60 years ago with Alan Shepard, took off from Cape Canaveral and landed in the ocean. If you don’t go fast enough to reach orbit, you will fall and return to Earth.
He asked a few questions: “So, are you high enough? Did you go to orbit? Did you actually go anywhere? Have you been to the Moon, Mars or beyond? “
Using a globe to show what he meant, deGrasse Tyson explained that the International Space Station and a spacecraft’s orbit would be 1cm from Earth while the Moon would be 10 meters away. According to this scale, Richard Branson climbed to about 2mm from the surface.
DeGrasse went on to say, “It’s okay if you want to call it ‘space’ because average humans have never been there before and this is a first for you. This is why it takes eight minutes to enter orbit and three days to reach the moon. It’s actually a trip to space. So I don’t see it as ‘oh let’s go to space’. No. What you are going to get is a beautiful view of Earth.
“I don’t even know if you’re going to see the curvature. I did some math and I think it didn’t. If you are 2 millimeters from the surface of this globe, you do not have full perspective. It is a visual effect that you get from 50 miles (around 80 kilometers). So have fun, ”he said.
Either way, with Branson completing the first space tourist flight and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos set to replicate the feat next week, it’s definitely starting a new industry.
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