Professor Ben-Israel, what is the greatest achievement of world space travel?
When I was a kid, there was a Star Trek TV series. It says that space is the final boundary.
In German, this is translated as “space-infinite width”.
Space is an unprecedented field. It’s about discovering new things and doing things that no one knew and no one could talk about before. It’s a great thing to break seemingly insurmountable boundaries-like sailing west to India and discovering America.
In 1969, the first man set foot on the moon. That is also unimaginable.
That is the need cold war And in the middle of the arms race. Both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to show each other their technological capabilities. They proved this in space. Then the cold war ended-yet people were interested in space.
The first moon landing aroused great interest. I have a feeling that it has faded since then-now it is increasing again.
There is no reduction in interest. We are all exploring space without even thinking about it.
Are you talking about satellites?
What we want to know in the morning is what can I wear, do I have to wear a sweater to work? Usually we don’t even know that weather forecasts are the product of satellite observations. This is only possible through space equipment.Then go to Frankfurt to see CNN From Atlanta. The cheapest method is to use communication satellites for transmission. And your mobile phone uses GPS based on satellite network.
Without space travel and its inventions, we would be very poor.
People hardly realize that someone must consider developing all of these to get into space. People are most interested in people, such as someone landing on the moon. Decided that the next mission will bring humans into space again, this time to Mars. To do this, we must land on the moon, because it cannot fly from the earth to Mars in a single flight. The plan is to build some kind of device on the moon-and then fly from there to Mars.
When are you looking forward to the first human on Mars?
Some people say it is 20 or 30 years. This is quite ambitious. It may take longer. But most of us will see it alive.
What is Israel’s space program?
As an independent space agency, manned missions are too expensive for us. But like Germany, we have many skills to complete the global mission to Mars. We participate as much as possible.
Israel hopes to land on the moon as the fourth country. But two years ago, the space probe crashed as it approached.
We have gone through three stages of space activities. We signed a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, which is why Egypt does not allow soldiers to be stationed in the Sinai Peninsula. But how do we monitor it? With a peace agreement, we can no longer send reconnaissance planes. Satellite is the only option. That was the beginning of our space exploration, mainly for defensive needs. The second stage is scientific, starting with the launch of a satellite together with the French Space Agency to monitor the environment, water pollution and agriculture. Later, an Israeli school even sent satellites into space. Subsequently, Google XPrize provided a bonus of US$20 million for the first non-governmental organization to go to the moon. Three young engineers came to my office, about 30 years old. They said: We want to build a US$10 million satellite to land on the moon. For this we need a year or two, get bonuses, and take US$10 million as a profit.
