Amazons Jeff Bezos is the second-richest man in the world and plans to launch himself into space at the end of July. This has prompted a global petition asking for him to stay. It would be a shame if the history of human space exploration was ended at this moment with the self-launch by a narcissistic tax dodger. This would be an epitaph to a remarkable tale that began with Nazi weaponry, and which has encompassed what is arguably the greatest human civilisation to date.It has been nearly 50 years since the last time humans walked on the moon's surface. In an age without internet or smartphones, people drove there in rattling cans and at incredible speeds using controlled explosions. The modern app economy boosters love to say that technological progress is at an all-time high. However, they seem to forget the time period between 1957 when the USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 into orbit, and 1969 when three men flew to and from the moon in separate spacecrafts. Two of them collected rocks and then blast off again to dock with the original spacecraft before returning to Earth and safely splashing into the ocean.The Saturn V, the 36-storey high, 36-storey-high rocket that pushed them out of Earth's gravity well, was the vehicle that did it. It was designed by Wernher von Braun, Nazi rocket scientist. Von Braun, the inventor of V2, terrorized London in late 1944 and was captured by the Americans. He was then taken to safety in the USA, where he was given responsibility for designing missiles for ballistic rockets to nuke the Soviets.Von Braun dreamed of more pleasant ways to use his rocket science. He wrote a series for Colliers Magazine between 1952 and 1954 under the heading Man Will Conquer Spatial Soon! The US military was alarmist. One month later, President Kennedy declared that the Americans would send someone to the moon by the end if the decade was over. The space race was underway.From left: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are part of a tickertape parade that took place in New York in August 1969. Photograph by Bill Taub/Nasa/ReutersThis era is the core narrative of Colin Burgess's book on Australian space history. Each Nasa mission in the Mercury and Apollo programs has been described in great detail, enough to delight space geeks of all ages. He also pays tribute to the incredible achievements of the Soviets who, for most of the duration of the space race, were still winning it until they lost it suddenly. He attributes this to Sergei Korolev's untimely death in 1966. This Russian genius, who was an engineer and had spent two years in Gulag following one of Stalins purges. He rose to become the chief designer of Soviet space program.Korolev was the one who began to fire dogs into the upper atmosphere in the mid-1950s without asking, to test the bio-effects from very high altitude flight. Just a month after Sputnik 1 was launched, Korolev launched Sputnik 2. This larger spacecraft, which would be the final home for the brave cosmodog Laika (the planet's first to experience spaceflight), sent up with bio-sensors to relay data back to Earth. However, there were no plans to return her home. Dog lovers all over the globe protested against the cruel act of sending her up there to circle Earth until she ran out of air. Burgess, a well-connected Russian source, claims that Laika died from heat exhaustion just a few hours after she took off. This might have been a relative mercy.The USSR was launching the first object, the first animal and then the first human into space. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space. Meanwhile, the Americans were trying to catch up. They eventually launched a few monkeys into the high atmospheric atmosphere. 1958 saw the creation of Nasa. The term astronaut (Greek: star sailor), was officially adopted. Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey, was the first American astronaut to fly into space.Burgess recounts the stories of crewed spaceflight from both sides of the iron Curtain with great verve and suspenseful narrations of near-disasters. Gagarin's spacecraft on the early Mercury mission, for example, barely avoided burning on re-entry. John Glenn's Friendship 7 craft also managed to avoid that fate. One cosmonaut nearly died when his suit ballooned, preventing him from passing through the airlock. The Apollo 10 mission almost ended in disaster when the radar of the lunar lander locked onto the moon rather than the command module that it was supposed to rendezvous with. Apollo 11 was saved by Neil Armstrong, a crack pilot who overrode all the automatic systems trying to place it on rocks. Instead, he flew to a safer landing zone and had only seconds left of fuel.There are also sober assessments of the actual disasters. These include the fatal fire in Apollo's command capsule during a ground test, and the 1986 loss of Challenger due to a frozen O ring in a rocket booster. It's absurd, no? / A rocket-ship explodes. / But everybody still wants to fly, sang Prince one year later.Nasa plans to return people to the moon by the middle if the decade. This begs the question: Why did the moon-going cease nearly 50 years ago? Surprisingly, the answer is that we got tired of it. Burgess points out that the sight of astronauts jumping around in one-sixth gravity was becoming tiresome and that public support for the agency's lunar missions has plummeted.What has changed? China has landed a robot onto the moon last year and announced plans to create a joint lunar base with Russia. Some of Donald Trump's Space Force may also want to be there jockeying in the position. Space is becoming more popular due to Elon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur and creator of SpaceX and Tesla rockets. He used one of these rockets to launch a red Tesla into space. In honor of the David Bowie song, a Starman mannequin is in the driver's seat. Musk's authentic rocket exhaust is visible as minnows with vanity space firms, such as Bezoss Blue Origin or Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic. This company is notable for promising its first space tourist flights within a decade.Is space exploration more than just a contest between plutocrats and dick-waving? Burgess believes that space exploration is an imperative for humans. He also writes that traveling further in space is our unavoidable destiny. However, he may have made a more passionate defense of it. While some argue that space exploration is a waste, while there are still problems on our planet, it has never been an either/or proposition. The UK was not forced to choose between spending more money on the NHS or staying in the EU. Pure science alone can support the argument, considering the cosmological discoveries made by the Hubble telescope and the James Webb space telescope that will follow it later in the year.Perhaps the most important reason is that even if we try to be better stewards of Earth, it may become uninhabitable due to no fault of ours. A large asteroid impact, or a burst of gamma radiation from a nearby star collapsing in a black hole could cause the atmosphere to be destroyed. It might be beneficial to have a spare world in such a case. We might also feel grateful for the pioneering space-sailors, who made evacuation possible.Reaktion publishes The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration. Support the Guardian and the Observer by purchasing a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.
