Is the Turkish Space Test Over? Gezeravci, Astronaut or Just a Space Tourist?

Gezeravci is returning from space. Gezeravci and his 3 astronauts will transfer to the Dragon capsule, which has been docked to the space station for 14 days. The journey back to Earth will take 12 hours. After the doors are closed, the capsule will leave the space station, then slow down and return in a controlled manner.

The topic of "going to space" has become so sensitive that words and sentences are sensitive when there are things like politics, hamasas and creating perception! In fact, when I wrote this article, a Turk's test with space had just begun. In those days, this issue was highly politicized, and everyone who knew or didn't know added their emotions and political views to it. Since I found it more ethical to publish this article after my former colleague returned to his country and reunited with his family, I did not publish it in those days! 

What was this meeting with space then? Let's look at the past, present and future effects of this event. Without a trip to the moon, did we buy a 14-day space tour for 55 million dollars? The Ax-3 crew consisted of the following 4 astronauts. Alper Gezeravcı (Turkey), Walter Villadei (Italy), Marcus Wandt (Sweden) and flight commander Michael Lopez-Alegria (USA). The Axiom Space company was lining up anyone who was willing to pay 55 million dollars for a 10-day space trip. This is a fact that everyone knows. It is only important that the money is given. In this way, anyone who wants to and who is rich enough, if he pays this amount of money, which is 55 million dollars, he can be put in the queue and go into space when his turn comes. In short, a dollar millionaire who could afford to buy a mansion in the Bosphorus could go on this journey if he met the health conditions. 

However, our esteemed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had told us that in the 100th anniversary of the Republic, in 2023, Turkey's goal of flying to the moon would be realized! This did not happen, but Colonel Alper Gezeravcı, a Turkish Air Force pilot, went into space as Turkey's first astronaut. The truth of the matter is that the flight is not the result of Turkey's space efforts for now, but the success of a company called Axiom Space in Houston, Texas, USA, which launched space tourism for 55 million dollars per man. After all, isn't this a commercial success, a good example of entrepreneurship?

Fatih Kacır, the Minister of Industry and Technology, announced that one of the 13 experiments in fields such as biology, medicine, materials science and genetics that will take place during the 14-day flight was prepared by students at the Muş Science and Art Center, but did not provide further details. According to technology writer Füsun Sarp Nebil, the $55 million cost of the flight was covered by the Ministry of Industry and Technology. The Ministry is also coordinating the work of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA) and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). The details of the 55-million flight, which Colonel Gezeravcı will be the first Turkish citizen to go into space, was the company's third flight to date, hence the name Axiom-3. The company makes its flights with the Falcon9 rocket manufactured by Elon Musk's SpaceX and merges with the space station, but Axiom is not Musk's company! You should pay more attention to what I am going to tell you next. 

Gezeravci shared the flight with an Italian and a Swedish fighter pilot; the flight commander was an Axiom astronaut who had commanded the first two flights. Let's take a look at the flight crew before that! Two Saudi Arabian citizens, one of whom was a female biologist and the other a fighter pilot, and a US businessman participated in the Ax-2 flight; and three investor "space tourists", one US, one Canadian and one Israeli, participated in the Ax-1 flight. So what did our President Erdoğan say? 

President Erdoğan had said the following at the introductory meeting of the National Space Program on February 9, 2021: "Our most important goal is to realize the first contact with the Moon in the 100th year. Look at the sky, see the Moon. God willing, we are going to the Moon. In the first stage, we will reach the Moon with our own national and indigenous hybrid rocket, which we will fire in near-Earth orbit at the end of 2023, and make a hard landing. We will carry out the first launch with international cooperation. Thus, we will collect the necessary information for the second stage lunar mission. In the second phase, which we plan to carry out in 2028, we plan to carry out the first launch that will take our vehicle into close orbit, this time with our own national rockets and soft landing. Thus, we will become one of the few countries that can carry out scientific activities on the Moon." 

The first astronaut candidate, 43-year-old Colonel Alper Gezeravcı, was the government's choice to use the $55 million ticket for space flight. Colonel Gezeravcı, who had served in the Turkish Air Force for 21 years, including time in and out, was currently serving as an F-16 fighter pilot and had successfully passed all intellectual, medical, psychological and psycho-motor tests and had gone into space. In case Gezeravcı became ill or was unable to go for any other reason, Tuva Cihangir Atasever, a 30-year-old aerospace engineer working at Roketsan, was to serve as the replacement astronaut.

Colonel Gezeravcı's space journey was a first for Turkey's space studies. On the other hand, I see this event as an expensive trip, part of a cheap propaganda and perception campaign. I wish the event had not taken place on the eve of the elections! Until recently, "Vatan millet Sakarya" (Motherland, Nation, Sakarya) was one of the most common methods used by the ruling party to change the agenda. Now they are trying to add technological success rhetoric to this propaganda method. This may seem normal from a political point of view. Such discourses can be quite effective, especially among a section of the population that feels a sense of inferiority in the face of the scientific and technological capabilities of developed countries. And it is! This expensive space travel serves this very purpose. Okay, in the 1960s and 70s, launching rockets into space, and especially sending people into space, was a very serious sign of technological and economic power. At that time, societies in the world that were unable to do so were the envy of those that could. Today, going into space has almost become a touristic activity, a millionaire can go into space whenever he wants, and many companies now even offer space tourism services. It's gotten to the point that Elon Musk, the Edison of our time, even sent a Tesla automobile, also produced by his company, into space on a rocket built by his own company, just for the sake of publicity.

In other words, going to space has become an expensive but ordinary business. No one is surprised or seriously impressed by these things. That is why there were no big celebrations. It is a clear fact that a society's development, strengthening and becoming a welfare society absolutely depends on its scientific and technological achievements. The source of scientific and technological success is naturally the education system! Societies that do not attach importance to science, art and sports education, and that are governed by perception instead of thinking, questioning and creative generations, cannot achieve scientific and technological success in any way. Well, when you miss the truth of the matter, it is the nature of politics to pretend to show off by "pretending"...

With respectful love