It will be 50 years this year since mankind last set foot on the Moon. When Eugene Cernan departed the moon’s surface on December 19th, 1972, he did so in the believe that “not too long into the future” people will return there.
Fifty years on and Cernan remains the last man on the moon. Former astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that will change this decade and sooner than many people expect.
Mr Hadfield, the former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), says a return to the moon will happen “within five years for sure and maybe within three”.
Mr Hadfield is a regular visitor to Ireland as his daughter Dr Krisin Hadfield is an assistant professor in the School of Psychology in Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He first came to prominence with an Irish audience in 2014 when he tweeted a photograph of Ireland from space to mark St Patrick’s Day.
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He will be in conversation with Dr Niamh Shaw at the O’Reilly Theatre in UCD on Saturday afternoon as part of the UCD Festival.
Nasa’s Artemis plan envisages humans returning to the moon in two years time through the most ambitious timetable. The first mission will also see the first woman set foot on the surface of the moon and later missions will also include the first person of colour.
Mr Hadfield says the timetable may be determined by the US government’s Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA)’s ruling on Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme. That ruling is expected on June 13th.
Nasa has chosen Musk’s Starship as its first crewed lunar lander which will bring the next astronauts to the surface.
Mr Hadfield said approval if given will mark a “big radical change” in space travel.
“That will then clear the way for him (Elon Musk) to be able to launch a vehicle that is 10 times cheaper and 100 per cent reusable like no rocket we have ever seen before,” he said.
“The cost has come down so low that private individuals can buy tickets for space. That’s an amazing thing. Our technology has got so much better. We can send robots to space and they can start building habitats and have people there temporarily.
“As soon as you radically drop the cost, you open up the possibilities for business, for exploration and for tourism just as we did with cars. We are at that stage right now in rocket science. A lot of people focus on the billionaire’s flying. They are missing the point. We are at a tipping point where the vehicles are proven enough that they can start taking passengers up.”
Mr Hadfield, who was born in 1959, said manned space travel is new in human experience and has happened only in his lifetime.
Humans have been on the Earth for 300,000 years and there has been civilisation for 10,000 of those years. In the span of history it is a short time and the possibilities are endless, he points out.
Mr Hadfield said we now know there is sufficient water on the moon and solar power to allow for a human settlement. “It is a matter of enormous opportunity. The surface of the moon is bigger than the surface of Africa and is completely untapped.”
www.ucd.ie/festival
