Advancements in Space Technology How about that huge spaceship SpaceX is working on, it is going to be able to hold one hundred passengers and fly them to the moon or Mars. I really don’t understand how that will be possible if they are going to Mars and even a trip like this to the moon would be very hard to do. If it is flying to Mars, how are the passengers going to be able to store enough food and water not only for the nine month trip, but also for their stay? The second thing I do not understand is how are the passengers going to be protected from radiation all that time and from the ill effects of being weightless for so long? These are only a couple of the problems. People have to breathe and if you have a hundred of them, they are going to use a lot of oxygen. This leads me to think Elon Musk may have made some sort of a breakthrough we don’t know about. After all he knows how long a rocket takes to go to Mars from the earth. We also know that ion propulsion is a lot faster, a new ion engine is being tested which scientists believe could do the journey in 39 days. This is a lot more manageable but still a long time. A nuclear powered rocket would only cut the nine month journey by about 25%. It is said a painted solar sail could reach Mars in about a month. These are all things we already know, but it is what we don’t know which is tantalizing. In 2017 Congress decided to hold hearings. They wanted to know how advancements were proceeding in space travel and they got an earful. They were told there were breakthroughs coming in speed, propulsion systems and increases in capacity. Obviously, there are new technologies coming down the road and it seems they will alter the way we travel through space. This brings up the most secret propulsion of all, which is anti-gravity. Gravity waves have been found in space and they travel at the speed of light. Here is the question, would it be possible for an anti-gravity engine if it exists to reach near light speed or even at it? Maybe we could prove Einstein wrong when he said we could never reach light speed. Since we have been experimenting with anti-gravity for at least 45 years or more it might be safe to say if we haven’t solved it, we have certainly found out a lot more about gravity we didn’t know. Could any of this knowledge be applied to space travel? If we could travel at the speed of light, we could reach Mars in under 3.5 minutes. It all depends how far Mars is from earth at the time we left. There has been a lot of talk about lightsails, but not in the way I mentioned above. Engineers have been talking about building a large laser in space and using it to shine the beam against the lightsail of a spaceship. The solar sail type lightsail was first used in 2010 when the Japanese sent a probe to Venus. It only used the sun’s radiation. There is energy all around us and we create a lot of it. It doesn’t take much energy to move an object in space this is why a very low power ion engine can accomplish this. Who knows what other types of energy are capable of moving a spacecraft? So far, we have decided there is nothing we can do about traveling faster than light in the real world. Sure, we have been told about bending space, warp engines and such but right now they are fantasy. In the future this could change. We do not know enough about space. There could be waves traveling so fast in space we don’t know they exist. I know if we asked some scientists, they would say this was nuts, but scientists have told us this before only to be proven wrong. Some scientists however have hypothesized tachyon particles would exceed the speed of light. Most scientists say they could not exist. When we talk about propulsion and that is what I am talking about here, might we find if we combine it with something else, we could increase efficiency? Maybe some day it might be combined in some way with time. If space can be bent, and some scientists believe it can, might it be possible to bend time? If we could do that perhaps we could decrease the travel time a spaceship would need. If we can’t get to Mars in under 30 days is there anything else we can do to make the trip even possible? Perhaps we could build way stations first which would allow passengers to stop off on the way. They could refresh themselves and even restock the ship. If there were two or three of these places on the route to Mars it could be quite helpful. The problem is cost and time. It would not be cost effective and delay the trip by years while these stations were being built and the way technology is going, they could soon become unnecessary. The world is getting space fever. The United States has to work to stay ahead in this field which means we are going to have to rely on the private space companies for help. They certainly are doing quite well for the short time they have been around. I am not talking about the Old aerospace companies, but the new comers. There is a new advance space propulsion technology. It is a plasma-based rocket. It was developed by NASA along with the Department of Energy and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is supposed to reduce the amount of fuel required on space missions and allow for very long duration missions. New materials are also being developed which may create lighter, stronger and more heat and radiation resistant spacecraft. It is not only space where we are making incredible progress but also in aircraft among other devices. The newest idea is zero-fuel aircraft. These are aircraft which run on photovoltaic panels that provide electricity for an electric motor which powers the aircraft. Along with electric cars this has become a hot technology. Aircraft powered by electric solar cells are far cheaper and less complex to run. There is an exciting future ahead of us which may make manned space exploration commonplace. It is only a matter of time before we are able to create bigger, faster and more reliable spacecraft.
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