NEW YORK – The new era of human colonization of space began at 8:52 am yesterday, Italian time, when, from the same launch base in Baikonur, in the steppes of Kazakhstan, from where Yuri Gagarin departed, a Soyuz spaceship broke the blanket of fog and brings an American astronaut and two Russians into orbit. William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalyov will be the first inhabitants of the international space station. For four months they will work, sleep, cook, do gymnastics, write love messages with e-mail, watch television, recycle pee, quarrel and joke: all closed in a kind of big “trailer” at 384 kilometers above to our heads. Expedition 1, the mission begun yesterday after four years of delays, mainly due to the economic difficulties of post-communist Russia, marks a qualitative leap. The result of the cooperation of 16 countries, including Italy, and an investment that could reach 230 thousand billion lire, the international space station will host, in fact, the first stable nucleus of “colonists” of the cosmos. For the next ten years, maybe even for twenty-five, if the structures remain solid, the station will be continuously manned by the man.