L'espace des fous, an essay published by Philippe Lugherini (S1972)

December 1972 saw the launch of Apollo 17, the last of the manned space missions to the Moon. A page was turned; a new era began, that of space activities in the immediate service of the economy, science, society and the strategic independence of states.

It was a time of reasoned audacity which, far more than the astronauts' leaps to the Moon, turned the world upside down.

And then came the time of excess. With the American desire to return to the Moon, and the advent of the New Space movement driven by charismatic entrepreneurs, space ambitions took on a whole new dimension: space tourism, industrial exploitation of space and celestial bodies, settlement on the Moon or Mars...

Is this really an answer to the contemporary challenges facing mankind? Is this the giant leap for mankind that Armstrong predicted?

The author places the emergence of these mad space ambitions in the technical, geopolitical and societal history of the last fifty years, and, in a break with the enthusiasm that prevails today, denounces a space that has gone mad.

Our comrade Philippe Lugherini (S1982 - X1980), now retired, began his career with the French Ministry of Defense as director of the Hélios program, Europe's first military Earth observation satellite. He was director of space activities at SODERN, a space equipment manufacturer, chairman and CEO of Nuclétudes, an engineering company, and of CILAS, specialized in high-performance lasers, and director of strategy at ArianeGroup, prime contractor for Ariane launchers.