Samantha Cristoforetti talks about her new private space station project

The real news for Europe is the ability these vehicles will have to return to Earth. We would like to make a first demonstration flight in 2028 on the ISS, before it is decommissioned for good in 2031. There is no time to lose, we must hurry, both on the part of the European Space Agency, promoter of the project, but above all on the part of the companies that finance these vehicles with direct investments of at least 40%. They really have to believe.

Could these vehicles one day become a kind of taxi and carry human beings on board as well?
My dream in my (and many others') drawer is that this will become an opportunity for European industry to show that we are capable of building these vehicles cheaply, quickly, and that, once we have won the trust of our governments, we can take the next step: the development of a vehicle to transport astronauts.

We all have in mind the spectacular images of Space X's Starship rocket that a couple of days ago returned perfectly to the launch pad. Is the Moon today a little closer for human exploration?
Surely the Moon is the next concrete goal. We will continue to have astronauts in low orbit, but in that range it no longer makes sense to continue to call it 'exploration'. We could say that we have moved from exploration to exploitation, which means the exploitation of the opportunities that arise for research and private operators.

Regarding exploration, however, we want to return to the Moon with a robust and permanent presence, not as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Starship is an important element in this goal because Space X has proposed to NASA a lander version of Starship, capable of reaching the lunar surface.

Every Starship flight that demonstrates new capabilities brings us one step closer to the realisation of these 'landing' missions on the Moon.

I have to say that the return of the Starship booster, filmed on the launch pad, was truly science fiction and I think it makes the heart race from a technical point of view. Of concern is the ever-widening gap between Space X's capabilities and those of everyone else.

Are large injections of private capital, such as Elon Musk's, a risk or an opportunity for the space economy?
Private investment has overall been a significant injection of resources and innovation. I don't think we need to worry about that, I would rather focus on how to narrow the gap for Europe compared to other realities. Here, access to high capital is much more difficult. In short, we have to try to systemise the available resources and we have to do it strategically so that we do not find ourselves in a situation that could become irretrievable.