Category Archives: Space Travel

The rain lasered in sideways at Nowlan Park on Sunday. The sort of spiteful downpour that comes looking for you, no matter how well you think youre covered by the lip of the stand. And it was cold too. League cold. February cold. Cold enough to make you think that the folks feeling weepy about having to watch on GAAGo should colour themselves blessed. Make me a hurling spectator, Lord - but not yet.

Hurling is its own heat source, of course. Even though the game Kilkenny and Antrim served up didnt turn out to be particularly close in the end, it still rocked and rolled for long enough to make you stop noticing the weather. Kilkenny even looked to be trying out new modes of expression for themselves.

They were flicking and tricking, laying off first-time volleys to overlapping runners, drawing defenders this way before handpassing off the stick that way. They looked to be - and this is still Brian Codys team, so lets not overegg it here - but they looked to be hurling for the fun of it.

Fun. Sport as fun. Its such a forgotten thought. We spend so much time being so determinedly serious about everything these days that it feels like letting the side down almost to even consider the idea.

And yet, look at David Cliffords reaction to his hat-trick goal on Saturday for Kerry against Galway. He ran back to his position smiling like a loon. Not because he had scored his first senior hat-trick and not because it put the game well out of Galways reach. But because making a whole intercounty defence look like theyre gone headlong down a waterslide with one simple drag-back is, at its heart, a lot of fun.

The snooker player Terry Griffiths was asked away back in the 80s what he thought explained the popularity of sport. Not just his sport, which was massive at the time, but all sport. His answer was that if you find yourself walking past a snooker table with a couple of balls sitting out, its virtually impossible to stop yourself trying to roll one of them into a pocket. Just to see can you do it. Just for the fun of it. Thats what sport amounts to.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the ultimate just-for-the-fun-of-it sporting event. It wasnt a competition and in fact that act itself wasnt even completed with any great proficiency. But for the sheer kick of trying something, its hard to fathom how it will never be beaten. It was, of course, the golf shot on the moon.

Alan Shepard was the first American in space. He was one of only 12 people ever to stand on the surface of the moon. He fought in the Pacific during World War II, became an admiral in both the Navy and Nasa and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour. But to golfers, hell always be the guy who took two golf balls to the moon and swung a six-iron at them.

Well, kind of a six-iron. It was actually the head of a six-iron attached to a thing called the Contingency Sample Return Container - basically the long tool the astronauts used to collect moondust to bring home with them. He got Jack Harden, the local pro in his club in Houston, to design an attachment and stuck the head of the six iron in the thigh pocket of his space suit, along with two range balls. That was the easy bit.

The hard bit was not getting thrown off the rocket for even thinking of it. Shepard was heading up on Apollo 14, the first space mission after the near-disaster that would later be immortalised in the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13. Americans were starting to get antsy when it came to space travel, unsure if it was really worth all the money that was being spent on it and petrified that one of these missions was going to end in fatalities.

So when Shepard had the idea of hitting a golf shot on the moon, he got a very short and very direct answer from the mission leader Bob Gilruth. Absolutely no way, Gilruth said. Imagine the howls of disgust if something went wrong while Shepard was out there attempting to satisfy his inner Bobby Jones. It could shut down the space programme in a single stroke.

Shepard wouldnt let it go, though. He wanted to scratch an itch, to see how far a ball would go in zero gravity. So he made a deal with Gilruth. If we have screwed up, if we have had equipment failure, anything has gone wrong on the surface where you are embarrassed or we are embarrassed, I will not do it. I will not be so frivolous.

I want to wait until the very end of the mission, stand in front of the television camera, whack these golf balls with this makeshift club, fold it up, stick it in my pocket, climb up the ladder, close the door and were gone.

Gilruth was reluctant but he gave it his blessing in the end. And so, on February 6th 1971, just before jumping back up to the steps of the lunar module and heading back to earth, Shepard pulled out the two range balls and threw them down on the sandy surface at his feet. He took out his modified six-iron and addressed the first one. Because his suit was so cumbersome, he was only ever going to be able to swing one-handed. But swing he did.

The first was a shank. The ball had nestled a bit and he couldnt get much of a contact. But he set the second one up on a little hillock - I figured nobody was going to quote the rules of golf to me from a quarter-million miles away, he said later - and caught it much better. Its gone miles and miles and miles, he famously said. In reality, it only went about 40 yards. But still.

We can get so bogged down in sport at times. So attached to the right way of doing things, to best practice, to What Good Looks Like. And all of it is important, obviously it is.

But 50 years ago, a guy who frequently did as much po-faced achieving in a day as most of us will do in a lifetime went out and dropped a couple of balls and played golf on the moon. Just for the fun of it.

Now thats a sportsman.

Excerpt from:

Malachy Clerkin: Sport is all about fun - like hitting a golf ball on the moon - The Irish Times

Is this how space travel will look some day? 'Sulu, punch it!' Shutterstock

Some climatologists argue it may be too late to reverse climate change, and its just a matter of time before the Earth becomes uninhabitable if hundreds of years from now. The recent movie Interstellar raised the notion that we may one day have to escape a dying planet. As astrophysicists and avid science fiction fans, we naturally find the prospect of interstellar colonization intriguing and exciting. But is it practical, or even possible? Or is there a better solution?

Science fiction has painted a certain picture of space travel in popular culture. Drawing on stories of exploration from an age of tall ships, with a good helping of anachronisms and fantastical science, space exploration is often depicted in a romantic style: a crew of human travelers in high-tech ships wandering the Galaxy, making discoveries and reporting back home. Perhaps they even find habitable words, some teeming with life (typically humans with different-colored skin), and they trade, colonize, conquer or are conquered. Pretty much, they do as humans have always done since the dawn of their time on Earth.

How close do these ideas resemble what we may be able to achieve in the next few hundred years? The laws of physics and the principles of engineering will go a long way to helping us answer this question.

Nature has given us a speed limit. We call it the speed of light about 186,000 miles per second because we first noticed this phenomenon by studying the properties of light, but it is a hard upper limit on all relative speeds. So, if it takes light one year to get somewhere, we cant possibly get there sooner than one year.

There is also the fact that the universe is big, really big. It takes light about eight minutes to get to our Sun, three years to get to the next-nearest star, 27,000 years to get to the center of our own Galaxy and more than 2,000,000 years to get to the next galaxy. The amazing thing about these distances is that, as far as the universe is concerned, this is all in the neighborhood.

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The vast distances between solar systems combined with the speed-of-light limit puts severe constraints on the realities of space travel. Every space-based science fiction writer has to decide early on how to deal with this white elephant standing proudly in the room. Much of the more recent science fiction employs some form of worm hole or warping space: bending the four-dimensional structure of space and time to create shortcuts between two spatial locations in the universe.

Such possibilities have been analyzed with some mathematical rigor, and although the studies are tantalizing, they show that these methods cannot work unless we discover a form of matter that behaves very differently than anything we have ever seen.

Practical space propulsion systems available today and for the foreseeable future are based on Newtons laws. In order to move forward, we have to throw something backwards or get hit by something moving forward. It turns out that even using the best propulsion systems available, there is not enough mass in the entire Universe to propel even a single human being up to half the speed of light. Even relative speeds of 0.01% of the speed of light start to get prohibitively expensive.

Things look slightly better with advanced propulsion concepts such as thermonuclear propulsion, but optimistic near-future designs still top out at a few percent of the speed of light.

Large distances combined with low speeds means that exploration is going to take time. Astrobiologists tell us that our galaxy has no shortage of habitable worlds: estimates range from at least 1 every 10,000 stars to as many as 1 every 10 stars. Even so, given the vast distances between stars and the low speeds achievable by realistic spacecraft, you should plan on voyages between worlds taking centuries to millennia.

Consider also what is meant by a habitable world. To an astrobiologist, this means a planet with water oceans orbiting a sun-like star. But habitability by humans requires more than just water, and the chances that ordinary humans could simply step out and populate such a world is slim. The atmosphere and living ecosystem of Earth is the result of its own unique evolutionary history, one that is unlikely to occur coincidentally on any other planet.

Despite its current problems, the Earth is still far closer to the ideal that our species grew up in than any world we are likely to discover out in the Galaxy. Climatologists warn us of the devastation that could result from increasing the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by less than a tenth of a percent. Compared to that, another living world, with its own unique ecology, would most likely have an environment that is unbreathable and infertile at best, lethally toxic at worst.

Terraforming, or modifying such a world to be habitable to humans, would require reconstructing its atmosphere and biosphere practically from scratch, eradicating any native ecosystem. This would be a task orders of magnitude more challenging than the relatively minor tweaks needed to restore the Earths environment to a pristine state.

Perhaps a more fundamental question, then, is why humans would wish to colonize other worlds. Given the centuries-long treks between stars, interstellar voyagers would necessarily have moved beyond the need for a planet to support their lifestyle: their vessels would be their habitat, autonomous and self-sufficient. They would not have to seek out new homes, they would build them.

From an economic standpoint, this would be vastly more resource-efficient than converting entire planets. NASA-sponsored researchers have developed detailed plans for spinning habitats that could accommodate tens or hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, from material that could be mined on site from an asteroid a few hundred meters across. This type of construction would avoid one of the major expenses of space colonization: the cost of lifting millions of tons of building materials into space.

Since our Solar system contains millions of such asteroids, they could support a population many times that of Earth, in air-conditioned comfort, with a fraction of the effort and none of the exotic technologies envisioned to terraform Mars, for example.

Ultimately, travel to other stars and colonization of other planets will be driven not by need, but by desire: the intellectual impulse to explore strange new worlds, and perhaps an aesthetic preference for natural (albeit engineered) environments.

Where do we go now? The commercialization of space flight promises to bring the cost of space travel down considerably, from tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to just hundreds of dollars per kilogram, through economies of scale and reusable rockets. This means that space will be more accessible to more and more people.

Already the lure of asteroid resources has fueled commercial competition. A single kilometer-sized metallic asteroid could supply hundreds of times the total known worldwide reserves of nickel, gold and other valuable metals. Space-based solar power could provide limitless renewable energy once the cost of construction in space becomes manageable.

The hyper-exponential growth that we have seen in other areas like automobiles and computers can now take place for space technology. The physical realities described above paint a very clear picture of the near future: orbital habitats perfectly designed for our lifestyle using resources obtained from our Sun, Earth, and the asteroids.

So if Earth ever become uninhabitable, we wont need to traverse the stars to find a new home. Orbital habitats will require a significant expansion of space industry, but this will happen soon enough, especially if we are forced to leave the planet for a little while so it can recover from our mistreatment.

Of course, if we discover warp drive, the picture will be entirely different.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

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Fredrick Jenet is the creator/director of both the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville and STARGATE, a public/private partnership with SpaceX. He works for UT Brownsville. He receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD).

Teviet Creighton is a professor in the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville and STARGATE, a public/private partnership with SpaceX. He works for UT Brownsville. He receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD).

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If Earth falls, will interstellar space travel be our salvation? - Yahoo News

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Space is big. Really big. You just wont believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is, writes Douglas Adams in the cult sci-fi novel, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

It might seem absurd, then, that space is also crowded at least, the region closest to Earth.

Why are we so intent on exploring space when we have so many problems right here on Earth? From resource management, to multispectral imaging, to radar mappers, our space-based tools can help us solve Earth-based problems. Soon, armadas of small satellites will connect the world by bringing the internet to everybody.

As we are realizing the benefits of our orbiting workforce, however, we must also be proactive in mitigating the rapid proliferation of space debris so we dont end up with a problem on the scale of air or ocean pollution before we even have the chance to inhabit the next frontier.

At present, more than 2,200 operational satellites are orbiting Earth. But the growing concern is the inoperative satellites, spent rockets and debris that also clutter the region collectively called space debris or space junk.

From the moment humanity entered space with the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, orbital debris began to accumulate. By 2020, those 2,200 operational satellites were joined by approximately 34,000 pieces of debris 10 cm in diameter or larger, roughly 900,000 objects from 1 cm to 10 cm, and more than 128,000,000 pieces under 1 cm. The mass of debris in Earth orbit totals nearly 7 million kilograms. While orbits eventually decay and debris can re-enter and burn up in Earths atmosphere, the process can take years.

Both satellites and space junk are primarily concentrated in two regions.

In Earths equatorial plane, just under 30,000 km above Earth surface, hundreds of satellites are in geostationary orbit. Most are communications and weather satellites,but they share their orbit with deceased predecessors.

The amount of junk in geostationary orbit pales in comparison to the satellites and debris in the zone that extends just above Earths atmosphere upwards to 2,000 km above its surface known as low-Earth orbit, or LEO. To get to higher orbits, the Moon, or other planets, spacecraft must pass through low-Earth orbit, where debris is most dense and orbital velocities are greatest. So, space junk imperils not merely spacecraft in LEO, but all forms of space travel.

As long as humans launch objects into orbit, space debris is inevitable.

Rocket launches leave boosters, fairings, interstages, and other debris in LEO. So do rocket explosions, which currently account for seven of the top 10 debris-creating events.

Human presence also creates orbital flotsam such as cameras, pliers, an astronauts glove, a wrench, a spatula, even a tool bag lost during space walks.

Some debris is created naturally from the impacts of micrometeoroids dust-sized fragments of asteroids and comets.

With limited lifetimes, operational satellites can become space debris. Satellites run out of maneuvering fuel, batteries wear out, solar panels degrade causing an orbital debris feedback loop, in which the problem is exacerbated when solar panels are sandblasted by micrometeoroids and tiny debris. As with rocket debris, spent satellites eventually re-enter Earths atmosphere and burn up, but the process can take years and the higher they orbit above Earth, the longer those orbits take to decay.

Space junk can impact operational spacecraft, yielding even more debris of all sizes, further increasing the impact risk. This is known as the Kessler syndrome, named for NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, who hypothesized spacecraft and orbital debris could reach a density such that each impact generates more debris and a greater likelihood of colliding with other objects rendering the use of LEO impossible for decades. (This was depicted in the 2013 filmGravity, in which astronauts portrayed by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stranded in space after debris hits their shuttle.)

Even the tiniest space debris is a hazard: particles the size of dust grains, even paint chips, can scour hard-to-protect components like optics and solar panels, shortening operational lifetimes and creating even more tiny flecks of debris. An impact by a 1 kg object travelling at 7.0 km/s releases the same amount of energy as the detonation of 6 kg of TNT.

Now, LEO is about to become even more crowded. SpaceX, Amazons Project Kuiper, OneWeb Corporation and Canadas Telesat plan on placing constellations totaling upwards of 50,000 satellites in LEO. Meanwhile, near misses between spacecraft and extant space junk are already occurring with greater regularity. In September 2020, NASA fired the engines of theProgressresupply module docked with the International Space Station, to boost the stations altitude in order to avert a collision with a rocket fragment.

Also read: 2 Indians are trying to predict how junk flies in space, could help ISRO protect satellites

In the mid-1990s, NASA issued the first guidelines to mitigate the growing orbital debris hazard; other international agencies followed. In 2002, the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, comprised of 10 member nations, adopted a consensus set of guidelines for the coordination of activities related to the issues of man-made and natural debris in space. If the guidelines are followed, we can have a cleaner and more compliant environment in space for the future.

Aerospace corporations are now designing small satellites to address space junk proactively. Satellites are incorporatingelectric propulsion systemslike ion and Hall Effectthrustersas well asplasma thrustersto minimize small particles from chemical rockets, and as end-of-life de-orbit thrusters to push failing or inoperative spacecraft into Earths atmosphere.Researchers in Japan are even experimenting with wooden spacecraft to minimize the levels of toxic debris introduced into Earths upper atmosphere when spacecraft de-orbit.

But what about extant debris as well as the debris that the introduction of tens of thousands of new satellites will, inevitably, generate?

Some companies,are planning to leverage spacecraft to pick up space junk. Others are devising methods to capture orbital debris, includingnets,harpoonsandmagnets. Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan are devising a contactless de-orbiting solution, whereby a satellite fires a particle beam at debris, causing them to slow, lower their orbit and enter Earths atmosphere.

To keep space junk to a minimum and allow us to effectively utilize low-Earth orbit for future exploration we need concerted, collaborative efforts on multiple fronts to both eliminate existing space debris and prevent the generation of future debris.

While space debris present hazards, space debris mitigation presents an opportunity for clever entrepreneurs to solve both in the next frontier and, perhaps, right here at home.

Dr. Max Polyakov, Founder, Noosphere Ventures, Firefly Aerospace, EOS Data Analytics

This article was previously published in the World Economic Forum.

Also read: Space exploration is commercial now. Thats how it should be

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Not just Earth, humans are polluting space too. Heres how we can stop - ThePrint

Elon Musk and his company SpaceX recently announced their first all-civilian-crewed space flight. This will be the first mission to space where the passengers wont be NASA-trained astronauts. The crew for the Inspiration4 mission will be trained on site to be prepared to go to space.

SpaceX has launched two crewed flights to the International Space Station comprising U.S. and international astronauts. However, this Inspiration4 will be the first crew of civilians who arent trained astronauts.

The aims of Inspiration4 mission are noble: to promote a charity for the Saint Jude Childrens Hospital. The flight will be captained by Jared Issacman, a tech entrepreneur. He started an initial donation of $10,000,000 to promote the event. Then anyone who donated $10 had a chance to be picked for a position on the space crew.

The crew has now been selected, and the flight is set to launch in the fourth quarter of this year. The three other members including Issacman are Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant, Sian Proctor, a geoscientist, and Chris Sembroski, an aeronautical engineer.

Inspiration4 is a historic event for space exploration and for the human race. Space missions for the past hundred years have been the domain of federal governments and exclusive personnel. Now for the first time, a group of regular people like you and me, are going to be able to leave the planet.

This mission opens the door for potential future private enterprises into space. The upcoming economic implications of civilian space travel are promising. SpaceX already employs 10,000 people. The global space economy including satellite communication and technology makes 423.8 billion dollars a year. Similar private space companies are cropping up all over the country like Blue Origin and Virgin Orbit. This mission could inspire countless future scientists and engineers.

Private space ventures help the development of various sciences such as astronomy, geology, biology, etc. The basic research capable of being done outside of the atmosphere is immensely valuable. Private space allows space travel for research to be cheaper and more accessible. If there are more crews going into space, there is more potential for research to be done connected to these new missions. In the 2018 budget request, NASA showed broad support for private sectors of space travel.

Space exploration is the next crucial and necessary step for our species. Think of how the human race will change its priorities if a large portion of us could see the planet in context. This may seem like fluffy semantics, but it truly could change the paradigm attitude of our existence. Carl Sagan once said, There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

Perhaps this new mission will create a future where more of us can see that demonstration.

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OPINION: SpaceX is making history The Appalachian - The Appalachian Online

By Jonny Lupsha, Current Events WriterBeing unloaded from a US Air Force Douglas C-133B-DL Cargomaster, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, this first Atlas launch vehicle was intended to launch an unmanned Mercury spacecraft into orbit, but it exploded at launch. Photo by NASA / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

For the first time in its history, Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, D.C. will soon feature a full-size aircraft not based on real-life air or space travel. An X-wing, one of the fighter spaceships from George Lucass Star Wars universe, will be exhibited at the world-famous museum alongside historical artifacts like Neil Armstrongs Apollo 11 spacesuit.

The National Air and Space Museum makes for a crucial stop when visiting the nations capital. In his video series Experiencing America: A Smithsonian Tour through American History, Dr. Richard Kurin, the Smithsonians Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, said that exhibits include several capsules from NASAs Mercury missions.

Visitors to the Air and Space Museums sister site, the Steven F. UdvarHazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, are bound to see a real capsule from NASAs Mercury missions. How did they come about?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)as a civilian government agency on October 1, 1958, Dr. Kurin said. Its first mission, Project Mercury, was to put an American into orbit. NASA designed and built a small nose-cone capsule that would be launched into space atop a rocketthe challenge, aside from achieving a successful launch and orbit, would be to return the astronaut to Earth alive.

According to Dr. Kurin, NASA engineers came up with the idea of a conical spacecraft with a cylindrical nose. On the other end, a broad, flat base was covered by a fiberglass and resin heat shield. This would create a shock wave to slow down the spacecraft during re-entry.

NASA recruited astronauts from the military, especially test pilots, who helped work on the Mercury designs and make them more operator-friendly; and in 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space.

Downtown at the Air and Space Museum, another historic item from the Mercury missions is on display in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall: the space capsule Friendship 7.

On February 20, 1962, 41-year-old former jet fighter pilot John Glenn was propelled into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Dr. Kurin said. Glenns space capsule, the Friendship 7, was fabricated by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. Its skin and structure were made of titanium, with nickel-steel alloy and beryllium shingles.

Dr. Kurin said it was a small aircraftjust 11 feet along and six feet across at its base. It was so small, in fact, that astronauts would joke that you dont get in the Friendship 7 so much as you put it on. Glenn orbited the Earth three times in approximately five hours, communicating by radio with NASAs Mercury Mission Control and taking pictures with two cameras and a rigged pistol grip that helped accommodate his bulky gloves. It splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean and Glenn was retrieved by the USS Noa.

Friendship 7 went on what became known as the fourth orbit, which is really a goodwill tour around the world, Dr. Kurin said. It arrived at the Smithsonian in November 1962 and was placed on display; in 1976, the space capsule was moved into the National Air and Space Museum, which opened up on the National Mall for the Bicentennial of the United States.

It was a testament to Americas spirit of discovery.

Edited by Angela Shoemaker, The Great Courses Daily

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Air and Space Museum in Spotlight as X-wing Exhibition Announced - The Great Courses Daily News

The report claims China wants to create destructive antisatellite weapons.Low-Orbit Security Threat

The US Director of National Intelligence released a report last month claiming Chinas upcoming space station poses a threat to national security.

China intends to launch a space station into low-Earth orbit in order to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits that Washington has accrued from space leadership, according to the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communityreport released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report said that its a part of Beijings bigger effort to compromise US security.

[The Peoples Liberation Army] will continue to integrate space services such as satellite reconnaissance and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) and satellite communications into its weapons and command-and-control systems to erode the US militarys information advantage, the report said.

The report also said that China is readying counterspace weapons to target US satellites.

Beijing continues to train its military space elements and field new destructive and nondestructive ground- and space-based antisatellite (ASAT) weapons, the report said.

That means theyre developing things such as spacecraft that can intercept and capture US satellites and/or Earth-based lasers that can disrupt them.

The report continued, China has already fielded ground-based ASAT missiles intended to destroy satellites in LEO and ground-based ASAT lasers probably intended to blind or damage sensitive space-based optical sensors on LEO satellites.

This is part of a growing call from experts for the US to prepare a space defense system. In fact, many claim that the USs current satellite infrastructure is very vulnerable to attacks from opposing nations.

Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies released a report titled Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space: Protecting Space Systems from Counterspace Weapons in February. It details countermeasures the US can take to defend against antisatellite weapons.

As technologies surrounding space travel become more sophisticated, its only a matter of time before we figure out a way to weaponize them. It wouldnt be a bad idea then if we figured out a few defense systems while were at it.

READ MORE: Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community [The Office of the Director of National Intelligence]

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US Intel Chief: Chinese Space Station is a Threat to National Security - Futurism

View larger. | Artists concept of faster-than-light travel through a wormhole. If it were possible, it would enable humans to reach other stars in a reasonable amount of time. Image via Les Bossinas/ NASA/ Wikimedia Commons.

Mario Borunda, Oklahoma State University

The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. It is about 4.25 light-years away, or about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km). The fastest ever spacecraft, the now-in-space Parker Solar Probe will reach a top speed of 450,000 miles (724,000 km) per hour. It would take just 20 seconds to go from Los Angeles to New York City at that speed, but it would take the solar probe about 6,633 years to reach Earths nearest neighboring solar system.

If humanity ever wants to travel easily between stars, people will need to go faster than light. But so far, faster-than-light travel is possible only in science fiction.

In Isaac Asimovs Foundation series, humanity can travel from planet to planet, star to star or across the universe using jump drives. As a kid, I read as many of those stories as I could get my hands on. I am now a theoretical physicist and study nanotechnology, but I am still fascinated by the ways humanity could one day travel in space.

Some characters like the astronauts in the movies Interstellar and Thor use wormholes to travel between solar systems in seconds. Another approach familiar to Star Trek fans is warp drive technology. Warp drives are theoretically possible if still far-fetched technology. Two recent papers made headlines in March when researchers claimed to have overcome one of the many challenges that stand between the theory of warp drives and reality.

But how do these theoretical warp drives really work? And will humans be making the jump to warp speed anytime soon?

This 2-dimensional representation shows the flat, unwarped bubble of spacetime in the center where a warp drive would sit surrounded by compressed spacetime to the right (downward curve) and expanded spacetime to the left (upward curve). Image via AllenMcC/ Wikimedia Commons.

Compression and expansion

Physicists current understanding of spacetime comes from Albert Einsteins theory of General Relativity. General Relativity states that space and time are fused and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. General relativity also describes how mass and energy warp spacetime hefty objects like stars and black holes curve spacetime around them. This curvature is what you feel as gravity and why many spacefaring heroes worry about getting stuck in or falling into a gravity well. Early science fiction writers John Campbell and Asimov saw this warping as a way to skirt the speed limit.

What if a starship could compress space in front of it while expanding spacetime behind it? Star Trek took this idea and named it the warp drive.

In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre, a Mexican theoretical physicist, showed that compressing spacetime in front of the spaceship while expanding it behind was mathematically possible within the laws of General Relativity. So, what does that mean? Imagine the distance between two points is 10 meters (33 feet). If you are standing at point A and can travel one meter per second, it would take 10 seconds to get to point B. However, lets say you could somehow compress the space between you and point B so that the interval is now just one meter. Then, moving through spacetime at your maximum speed of one meter per second, you would be able to reach point B in about one second. In theory, this approach does not contradict the laws of relativity since you are not moving faster than light in the space around you. Alcubierre showed that the warp drive from Star Trek was in fact theoretically possible.

Proxima Centauri here we come, right? Unfortunately, Alcubierres method of compressing spacetime had one problem: it requires negative energy or negative mass.

This 2dimensional representation shows how positive mass curves spacetime (left side, blue earth) and negative mass curves spacetime in an opposite direction (right side, red earth). Image via Tokamac/ Wikimedia Commons.

A negative energy problem

Alcubierres warp drive would work by creating a bubble of flat spacetime around the spaceship and curving spacetime around that bubble to reduce distances. The warp drive would require either negative mass a theorized type of matter or a ring of negative energy density to work. Physicists have never observed negative mass, so that leaves negative energy as the only option.

To create negative energy, a warp drive would use a huge amount of mass to create an imbalance between particles and antiparticles. For example, if an electron and an antielectron appear near the warp drive, one of the particles would get trapped by the mass and this results in an imbalance. This imbalance results in negative energy density. Alcubierres warp drive would use this negative energy to create the spacetime bubble.

But for a warp drive to generate enough negative energy, you would need a lot of matter. Alcubierre estimated that a warp drive with a 100-meter bubble would require the mass of the entire visible universe.

In 1999, physicist Chris Van Den Broeck showed that expanding the volume inside the bubble but keeping the surface area constant would reduce the energy requirements significantly, to just about the mass of the sun. A significant improvement, but still far beyond all practical possibilities.

A sci-fi future?

Two recent papers one by Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire and another by Erik Lentz provide solutions that seem to bring warp drives closer to reality.

Bobrick and Martire realized that by modifying spacetime within the bubble in a certain way, they could remove the need to use negative energy. This solution, though, does not produce a warp drive that can go faster than light.

Independently, Lentz also proposed a solution that does not require negative energy. He used a different geometric approach to solve the equations of General Relativity, and by doing so, he found that a warp drive wouldnt need to use negative energy. Lentzs solution would allow the bubble to travel faster than the speed of light.

It is essential to point out that these exciting developments are mathematical models. As a physicist, I wont fully trust models until we have experimental proof. Yet, the science of warp drives is coming into view. As a science fiction fan, I welcome all this innovative thinking. In the words of Captain Picard:

Things are only impossible until they are not.

Mario Borunda, Associate Professor of Physics, Oklahoma State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: If humanity wants to travel between stars, people are going to need to travel faster than light. New research suggests that it might be possible to build warp drives and beat the galactic speed limit.

Source: Introducing physical warp drivesSource: Breaking the warp barrier: hyper-fast solitons in EinsteinMaxwell-plasma theory

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Warp drives: Physicists give chances of faster-than-light space travel a boost - EarthSky

Sixty years ago, on May 5, 1961, a Redstone rocket hurled Alan Shepards Mercury capsule, Freedom 7, 116 miles (187 km) high and 302 miles (486 km) downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Freedom 7 parachuted into the Atlantic just 15 minutes and 22 seconds later, after attaining a maximum velocity of 5,180 mph (8,336 km/h). Shepard, a Navy test pilot and NASA astronaut, became the first American to fly in space.

Shepards flight was a triumph, not least because it had been conducted live on national television and in front of the world press. It was a notable contrast to the secretive ways of the Communist-led Soviet Union. But 25 days earlier on April 12, 1961, Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin had made a single orbit of the Earth, becoming the first human to travel beyond the atmosphere. It was just the latest Soviet space first, going back to Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, in October 1957. Gagarins flight was yet another stunning propaganda success in the Cold War Space Race.

Earlier in 1961, however, it was not at all clear that the Soviets would come first. The Eisenhower Administration and Congress had created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, a year after Sputnik, in part to overtake the Soviet Union in space. The new agencys Project Mercury hoped to launch an astronaut by 1960, which seemed possible because Mercury would have two launch vehicles. The smaller Army Redstone missile could send astronauts on short, suborbital journeys; the larger Air Force Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) would launch them into orbitthe projects prime objective. The reliable Redstone was available many months earlier than the troubled Atlas, which was blowing up regularly. NASA officials also saw suborbital flights as valuable spaceflight experience; at one point they thought all seven astronauts picked in April 1959 would fly such missions. But technical delays piled up. The first uncrewed Mercury-Redstone flight only got off in December 1960. Mercury-Redstone 2 on January 31, 1961, carrying the chimpanzee Ham, was mostly successful, but the booster did not cut off in time, triggering the capsules escape system and sending it higher and farther than intended. NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which had grown out of the Army and was still situated at Redstone Arsenal, wanted an additional test. That meant another delay for the crewed Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) launch, which could have happened in March of 1961 were it not for the extra test.

Alan Shepard became the first American in space in this Mercury capsule. He named it "Freedom 7," the number signifying the seven Mercury astronauts. Now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. (NASM)

That delay brought tensions inside NASA to a boiling point. Mercury was run by the Space Task Group, an organization led by Robert Gilruth and situated at the Langley Research Center in tidewater Virginia. Gilruths group would soon become the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. Marshall was led by the famous German-American rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Gilruth already disliked von Braun for being German and changing sides and his subordinates and the astronauts saw von Brauns demand for a new test as timidity and German overengineering. NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, ultimately decided in favor of Marshall because losing an astronaut was worse than losing the race. MR-BD (for Booster Development) flew successfully on March 24, 1961. That same month, the Soviets flew two successful orbital tests of their spacecraft. When Gagarin launched, they named it Vostok (East).

NASA had announced that three astronauts were candidates for MR-3: John Glenn, Virgil Gus Grissom, and Alan Shepard. A lot of things about that crew selection were never repeated, and for good reason. Highlighting those three implicitly diminished the other four: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Walter Schirra, and Donald Deke Slayton. Moreover, Shepard was Gilruths choice from the outset, yet NASA concealed this until after the cancellation of the first launch attempt on May 2, 1961, due to bad weather. The press also learned that Shepard had named his capsule Freedom and added a 7 for the seven astronautsa gesture of solidarity to the others. (Freedom 7 was also the seventh spacecraft built by the contractor, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.)

Alan Shepard looks into Freedom 7, which is sitting on the deck of the carrier USS Lake Champlain, after his flight. (NASA)

In the early morning darkness of May 5, 1961, Shepard climbed into his capsule atop the Redstone. Born in 1923 in Derry, New Hampshire, he had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1944, served on a destroyer in the last year of the war, took flight training, flew off carriers, and tested Navy jets. He entered Freedom 7 about two hours before scheduled launch at 7:20 am. Yet, technical delays dragged ontwo stories about that wait were later made famous by Tom Wolfes book The Right Stuff. Shepard had to urinate in his spacesuit because no provision had been made for the astronaut to relieve himself, and when he became irritated with the delays, he allegedly told launch controllers: Why dont you fix your little problem and light this candle? Shortly after that, at 9:34 am, they finally did.

The launch of the Mercury-Redstone (MR-3), with Freedom 7 capsule, on May 5, 1961. (NASA)

The rocket burned for a little over two minutes with the acceleration ramming him into his couch with a force of over six Gs (six times Earths gravity). After separating, the capsule turned around and pointed the heatshield forward for reentry. During the five minutes of weightlessness, Shepard tested Freedom 7s attitude control systems and extended the periscope to see back to Florida. (His capsule did not have the overhead window built into later vehicles.) Once over the top, it was time to fire the retrorocketsnot needed for his flight, but a test of how to get out of orbit. The brief reentry was brutal, with peak G loads of over 11. Parachute deployment was normal, and his spacecraft hit the ocean with a jarring impact he compared to landing on an aircraft carrier. A Marine helicopter picked him up and took him to the USS Lake Champlain.

Alan Shepard picked-up by a U. S. Marine helicopter at the end of his sub-orbital flight. (NASA)

Alan Shepard onboard a helicopter as he is transported from the aircraft carrier to meet NASA officials on Grand Bahama Island. (NASA)

Now a national hero, Alan Shepard was decorated by President John F. Kennedy at the White House on May 8. Less than three weeks later, on May 25, 1961, Kennedy asked Congress to approve a program to land humans on the Moon, a direct response to Gagarins flight. If Shepards mission had failed, the president likely could not have made that announcement.

President John F. Kennedy presented the NASA's Distinguished Service Medal Award to Alan Shepard in a Rose Garden ceremony on May 8, 1961. (NASA)

There were ironies in the aftermath of Shepards flight. Grissom flew a near-repeat on July 21, 1961, and then NASA cancelled further suborbital missions to concentrate on getting into orbit. When John Glenn circled the Earth three times in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, it eclipsed Shepard and Grissom in the public mind. Glenn was not only more charismatic; his mission finally equaled what the Soviets had done twice (Gherman Titov spent a day in space in August 1961). In 1963, Shepard was knocked off flight status for six years because of an inner-ear condition, but then, in the final irony, he became the only Mercury astronaut to go the Moon, commanding the Apollo 14 landing. He died in 1998, a legend. He will always be the first American, and second human, to fly in space, and the fifth to walk on the Moon.

Michael J. Neufeld is a senior curator in the Museums Space History Department and is responsible for Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, among other collections.

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First American In Space: The Flight of Alan B. Shepard - National Air and Space Museum

Barring any unexpected setbacks, SpaceX expects to launch its Falcon 9 rocket this coming January from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The target: The International Space Station; hovering some 275 miles above our heads and traveling through space at approximately 17,000 mph. SpaceXs own Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft will catch a ride aboard the rockets, carrying 4 extremely excited passengers, including among them, Israeli pilot and businessman Eytan Stibbe. He will be the second Israeli leaving the atmosphere, following the tragic loss of the Columbia space shuttle and its 7 astronauts, including pilot and national hero, the late Ilan Ramon.

The launch will mark the first ever private space mission to the International Space Station, leading many of the organizations involved to refrain from referring to Stibbe as an astronaut. Nevertheless, space tourism is not what you think, Stibbes role won't be limited to selfie stick duties; and even though he staked nearly $50 million, taking on most of the missions expenses on his own, Stibbe will use his 10 days in space to carry out over 40 different scientific experiments, which were determined by a scientific committee from the Ramon Foundation. Stibbe will also conduct experiments and research for Israeli startups, Israeli academic institutions, and other educational and research centers in the country.

Among the planned experiments, we find one from the Electric Company and Israeli battery powerhouse Storedot, which will test innovative lithium-ion batteries in a micro-gravitational environment. Another experiment on Stibbes docket comes from the oncological center at Schneider Children's Medical Center, who are looking to characterize leukemia cells at low gravity, and without chemotherapy present. According to the scientific committee, Stibbes space findings will be crossed with a comparable controlled experiment done on earth; monitoring cancer cells and their genetic expression, which could lead to innovative new treatments with less painful side-effects.

Another interesting experiment comes from collaboration between NASA and the Technion University, where Stibbe will investigate leveraging the micro-g environment to solidify a liquid polymer, creating a lens, 10X bigger than existing ones, for telescopes used in space exploration. Winning the award for the most Israeli experiment, Stibbe will attempt to sprout chickpeas at low gravity. Obviously, as preparation for the first wave of hungry Israeli tourists touching down on Mars after a long flight.

In an interview with Geektime, Stibbe shares the origin story behind his space trip, schedule, his vision for the future of space tourism, as well as the fears that accompany his journey to the great beyond.

Where did the idea come from? Has it always been a dream to be an astronaut?

When I was a kid, NASA landed on the moon, and it ignited my imagination to think of humans in other places in the galaxy. But then for years it was hidden, and for me only became a reality again when I met Ilan (Ramon, who was Stibbes former commander in the Air Force) at the space center during his preparation for the mission; when I saw people running back and forth, shuttles taking off and landing, and astronauts training, it was real. Not just on TV. Thats when I saw it was possible.

Tell us about the moment when you got the OK for the mission

Just recently, after Elon Musk privatized the industry, and opened up the race to space beyond governments and administrations; private companies are innovating in space travel, new space infrastructure, and they're even planning on returning to the moon Once he made it possible, then it became a reality. I was on standby, and once they gave me the green light, I immediately said yes.

Describe your day-to-day up in space...

The space station goes by London time. Everyone goes to sleep at the same time, wakes up at the same time, and we eat all our meals together. There are specialists and experts who plan our day, they know where everyone is located at all times. Whos going to the gym, whos in the lab, whos taking pictures with Earth, and all these different variables need to be coordinated There are passengers from Japan, Europe, and Russia. They cant all determine their own schedule. That task is up to the International Space Stations team, ensuring ten people are occupied and accommodated at all times. Of course there are experiments that need to be done live with the team on the ground. I expect surprises.

Youre going to conduct dozens of experiments from cosmic radiations impact on electronics to growing chickpeas. Which experiment do you find most fascinating?

Im more fascinated by the variety of research. Ill be conducting medical device experiments, as well as experiments in materials, communications, cosmic radiation measurements, and more. I cant tell you I have a preferred one. Anything that will hurt though, is definitely going to the bottom of the list The coolest ones are the experiments that kids sent. Experimenting through their rich imagination is going to be super interesting for me. Anyways, most of my time will be dedicated to educational aspects, including live broadcasts, recordings, and a rich curriculum full of lessons. We are trying to get as much live feed as possible.

Tell us a bit about the training and preparation for a mission like this one. Have you met your shuttle mates yet?

Ive met the other people on my mission, with one of them being Michael Lpez-Alegra (a veteran NASA astronaut, the current mission commander and VP at Axiom, the company responsible for the mission) who already has 4 trips to space under his belt, including a 7-month stay at the International Space Station. We met at the SpaceX headquarters during pressure-suite measurements and custom seat adjustments. Well meet again at the next phase, 10 months from now at the G simulator, and in a month the whole team is going bonding in Alaska Trekking through the Alaskan mountains with packs on our backs, and then 4 months of training in Houston, then SpaceX headquarters and the Dragon models But flying is a small part, the big thing is living at the space station; An amazing center of sustainability, a body living in extreme conditions, feeding off solar energy, and recycling anything it can - including over 90% of liquids. Everyone there is energetic and efficient, and its going to be quite interesting to live in a bubble of sustainability.

Where do you see space tourism in the future? The space station orbits nearly 250 miles above us. Can we go any further?

In space, theres no real difference between cruising 250 miles from the Earth or at 25,000 miles, where the satellites roam. The most interesting thing is the possibility of life on other planets. If we can establish a settlement on the moon, if we can grow food there, extract water somehow, and energy is abundant with advanced technology, everything is possible, then Mars you cant take 3 years worth of food with you. Just think of the concept of cultivating meat - just one of many potential ways of producing food on another planet, all incredibly fascinating. Even in extreme conditions - with sun or without, with water or no water - I truly believe we will find life outside of our planet.

Following the announcement of the mission, an argument erupted over you being a space tourist and private individual, and still receiving the Israeli hug as your mission to space has been nationalized. What are your thoughts on this? How do you define your mission?

Im Israeli. And I intend to go to space. These are the facts. However, since the announcement, everybody wants to jump on board: Universities, hospitals, the scientific community, the Ministry of Technology & Science, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health. All of them sit on different committees For example, sitting on the scientific committee we have the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science, the Israel Space Agency, and they all want something. Different institutions like schools, youth groups, municipalities, startups, and others, all want to try and get a chance to send their experiments up to space. So, I see in all of this as a small example of where Elon Musk is leading us; the global inclusion of the private space sector, where everyone can jump on.

I have the resources and the dream, and mostly, for me, its about the mission and its contribution to science, education, and whoever I can help.

And you have no issues becoming a nationally recognized figure, like some kind of Olympic athlete?

I have no problems with that. Its not my goal. I didnt do this to become famous. I do it for the rush, the experience, to fulfill my dreams, and because of the mission's importance Something I learned in the last 6 months is that space drives people crazy. It ignites their imagination, creativity, I meet kids who go "crazy" talking about space. We have some familiarity with the oceans on Earth, but up in space it's really like leaving our comfort zone, leaving what protects us; from the home of humanity to an unknown and scary place. Its inspiring, and not just for scientists, but also for artists, philosophers, and for the spiritual I didnt expect so many to get behind this mission - everyone wants to contribute someway, somehow, and its really fun to see.

Earlier you mentioned the late Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space. Arent you afraid of malfunctions?... As a veteran Air Force pilot and technical individual, you must be quite aware that technology sometimes fails?

Of course, even with my knowledge, theres still fear. But visiting the space center, and meeting the people behind the technology really helped. When youre flying on a 747 or 787, youre trusting Boeing. Its not like youre sitting eating breakfast wondering if the Boeing engineer attached the wing on right. SpaceX has had dozens of successful launches, and even after a few experiments and failures - now everything is working fine. I visited the Crew-2 launching site 2 weeks ago, and it really got the adrenaline rushing, and I was thinking to myself how am I gonna wait 10 months now?... Im definitely aware of the risks, but Im not afraid of the dangers.

No scenarios running through your head?

No.

So for you its just like another combat mission?

I think the Air Force is more dangerous Theyre trying to shoot you down but here, everyone wants to help you succeed. In the F16 its on you but here everything is autonomous.

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The second Israeli in space: "I'm aware of the risks, but not afraid of the dangers" - Geektime

Billionaire Jeff Bezoss space launch company Blue Origin has announced it will sell its first flights into microgravity to the highest bidder.

Blue Origin and its two greatest competitors in the space tourism field, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, claim to be advancing humanity through the democratisation of space. But these joyrides arent opening up access to space for all.

At face value, the prospect of a space tourism industry is exciting.

It promises an easier path to space than the one followed by astronauts, who must go through higher education, intense training and extremely competitive selection processes. Astronauts must also have the right nationality, because few countries have access to human spaceflight programs.

In theory, the opening up of a commercial spaceflight industry should make space more accessible and democratic. But this is only partly the case; what was once the domain of only the richest countries is now an industry headed predominantly by commercial entities.

Adding to this, these companies are prepared to take more risks than government programs because they dont have to justify their spending or failures to the public. Blue Origin and SpaceX have seen many explosions in past tests, yet fans watch with excitement rather than dismay.

This has pushed the rapid development of space technologies. Reusable rockets particularly SpaceXs Falcon 9, which just made its tenth successful launch have reduced the cost of launching tenfold.

Besides driving down costs, reusable technology is also working to solve the problem of sustainability.

There have been thousands of launches since 1957, when the first human-made object (Sputnik I) was launched by the Soviets. Apart from Falcon 9, however, every single launch vehicle has been used once and disposed of immediately akin to throwing away an aeroplane after one flight.

Launch numbers are increasing each year, with 114 carried out in 2020 alone. Over the weekend, the uncontrolled reentry of debris from Chinas Long March 5B rocket made world news because of its sheer size and the risk of damage. It is just one example of the problems of space debris and traffic management.

Safety is a key issue for human spaceflight. Currently, there are about 3,400 operational satellites in orbit and about 128 million pieces of debris. There are are hundreds of collision risks each day, avoided by expensive and difficult manoeuvres or, if the risk is low enough, operators wait and hope for the best.

If we add more human spaceflight to this traffic, countries will need to adopt stricter requirements to de-orbit satellites at the end of their lives, so they burn up on reentry. Currently, its acceptable to de-orbit after 25 years, or to put a satellite into an unused orbit. But this only delays the problem for the future.

Nations will also need to implement the 2019 United Nations guidelines on the Long-term Sustainability of Activities in Outer Space.

Read more: Space can solve our looming resource crisis but the space industry itself must be sustainable

The environmental impact of launches are another important factor. SpaceXs Falcon 9 burns as much fuel as an average car would over 200 years, for a single launch.

On the ground there are impacts on terrain and waterways, which we have to keep in mind when building future launch sites in Australia. Launch permits currently require environmental impact statements, but these should include long-term effects and carbon footprints as well.

In the coming years, it will be crucial for independent spaceflight companies to be tightly regulated.

Virgin Galactic has long advocated a shirtsleeve environment wherein customers can experience the luxury of spaceflight unhindered by awkward spacesuits. But the death of one of its test pilots in 2014 is evidence spaceflight remains dangerous. High altitudes and pressure require more precaution and less concern for comfort.

Although regulators such as the US Federal Aviation Administration have strict safety requirements for space tourism, pressurised spacesuits are not among them but they should be. Also, space tourism operators can require passengers to sign legal waivers of liability, in case of accident.

And while its laudable SpaceX and Blue Origin are making technological leaps, there is little in their business plans that speaks to diversity, inclusivity and global accessibility. The first space tourists were all wealthy entrepreneurs.

In 2001 Dennis Tito paid his way to a seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket to visit the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, there have been eight more space tourists, each paying between US$20 million and US$30 million to fly through the Russian program.

In 2022, the Axiom crew is scheduled to fly on a SpaceX Dragon flight to the ISS. Each of the three wealthy, white, male passengers will have paid US$55 million for the privilege. Meanwhile, Blue Origins upcoming auction will last five weeks, the highest bidder winning a seat for a few minutes of microgravity.

Virgin Galactics 90-minute joyrides, also scheduled to fly as early as 2022, have already sold for US$250,000. Future tickets are expected to cost more.

Of course, conventional recreational air travel was also originally for the wealthy. Early cross-continental flights in the United States costed about half the price of a new car. But technological advances and commercial competition meant by 2019 (pre-COVID) there were nearly five million people flying daily.

Perhaps its only a matter of time before space tourism becomes similarly accessible. Ideally, this would mean being able to fly from Sydney to London in a matter of hours.

Then again, spaceflight carries much greater risks and much greater costs than airflight, even with reusable rockets. Its going to be a long time before these costs are driven down enough to allow the democratisation of space.

This is a compelling narrative which commercial spaceflight companies are eager to adopt. But there will always be a portion of society that wont have access to this future. Indeed, as many science-fiction stories predict, human spaceflight or habitation in space may only ever be accessible to the very wealthy.

We know there are benefits to space-based technologies from tracking climate change, to enabling global communications and health services, to learning from scientific experiments on the ISS. But when it comes to space tourism, the payback for the average person is less clear.

Read more: Yuri Gagarin's boomerang: the tale of the first person to return from space, and his brief encounter with Aussie culture

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Want to become a space tourist? You finally can if you have $250,000 and a will to sign your life away - The Conversation AU