Some exciting news has been coming out lately about space travel and it is beginning to look like we may be on the verge of travel which would be more like what we see in science fiction novels than exists right now in real life. I’m talking about the fact the Russians have announced they found a way to create artificial gravity and they were going to test it out on a module attached to the international space station. I spoke about this recently. Now we are hearing about the fact scientists believe they can create a shield for a spaceship using plasma. The idea would be to shield the ship in the same manner which earth is shielded from cosmic rays. NASA announced if they were to send an astronaut to Mars today, during his trip he would receive 100 times the annual radiation dose received on earth and even this could be a misstatement, because if a solar flare would generate far more radiation the crew would be subject to its effects. If scientists wanted to shield a spaceship using current technology it couldn’t be done, because the shielding would be so heavy the ship couldn’t take off from the ground. The new system has been tested and seems to work well, it is not just a pipe dream. A magnetic field would be created around the ship mimicking earth’s magnetosphere. One scientist said, "On Earth, mostly we're protected by the atmosphere, but ultimately what the Earth's magnetic field is doing is forming a first line of protection for life.”

Scientists never talked about this problem very much, that is the problem of radiation, but they all knew about it and maybe that is why some scientists never got too excited about the thought of space travel by humans. Now this might be about to change and will more scientists throw themselves into the challenge of manned space travel? Another thing we might be seeing soon and I hate to talk about politics, is a joint missions with the Russians. There is no doubt President-elect Trump wants closer ties with Russia and the Russians have been assisting us with rocket engines and the International Space Station and also supplying cosmonauts. Both countries have a long history of space endeavors and if they both got involved in space travel together, it just might advance our technology in this area. President Obama had told the Russians they couldn’t get involved with us when we go back to the moon, but if I was a betting man I might bet that this is going to change.

Currently the plans for shielding a spaceship from radiation seem archaic and in some cases disgusting. I say this because some scientists believe the answer is to store not only food and water all around the inside of the ship, but also human excrement. They believe this will absorb some of the radiation and help keep the crew safe. It reminds me of someone trying to wipe out roaches by stepping on them one at a time. The gravity device might also be helpful not just on a spaceship, but for use on a planet which has less gravity than the earth. It has been predicted if we go to planets like Mars and colonize them, in time the residents would never be able to return to earth, because its gravity would be too strong for them.

There is no doubt that physicist Stephen Hawking is a genius. There is also no doubt he is an incredible person who has managed to overcome one of the most debilitating diseases anyone could have. I truly admire the man, but having said that, he is kind of gloomy in his predictions. First he told us it is a big mistake to try and contact alien races, because if we succeed they would probably wipe us out, much as we destroyed large portions of Native American culture, because we were more technologically developed than they were. He then has gone on to say the human race will only exist for a relatively short period before it is wiped out. He believes if we don’t go out into space and colonize other worlds we will wipe ourselves out with the automated weapons we are developing. While I too hate automated weapons I wouldn’t go so far as to say there will be no humans left because of them. The problem is we have all sorts of safeguards built into the robots we are using today, but what happens when we build robots and write programs for them which allow them to kill human beings? This also happens to be a violation of one of the laws of robotics put forth by Isaac Asimov, which has served us for many years as ethical constraints for robots. When we venture off into space robots will become necessary crew members, because they will be able to be used under conditions humans couldn’t survive or would be uncomfortable with. Do we want to take robots along with us who are programmed to be able to kill?

SpaceX is trying very hard to become the preeminent space company. We know they landed a rocket on a platform successfully and were the first to do this. We also know they have had some failures, but all in all their plans are very ambitious and they could be the first ones to reach Mars with a crew of humans on board. Some believe Elon Musk, who is the head of SpaceX is in some sort of a race with NASA to reach Mars. NASA denies this and I don’t believe Musk believes it either. I think Musk is just very excited about the idea and wants to reach the red planet as fast as possible and who can blame him? We’ve been disappointed before. Remember how we stopped going to the moon and no really good reason was given except we were told people had lost interest? This was the furthest thing from the truth when I asked people I knew about this. There was definitely something else going on and many believe it may have been the birth of the secret space program and secret space fleet.

One can’t really blame any enthusiastic person for not wanting to wait to get out into space, because we have been waiting for many decades and yet all we have done is go into orbit. Is this really all we have done and could it be radiation has stopped us from doing more, or are we out there and already hiding the fact? It is beginning to look like there are going to be a lot of breakthroughs in the next few years which will allow us to get out there, not only in a safer way but in a more efficient way. There are several new types of engines being considered for space travel and at least one of them is violating the law of physics and yet it works and has many scientists scratching their heads. We have some interesting times ahead of us.