Category Archives: Space Travel

Rumor has it, pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio are taking a trip to outer space...

It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but have you heard of Virgin Galactic? Founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, the company has built the worlds first spaceship.

Let me be clear...

Its not just an idea. Its not just a concept. Its not just a glorified airplane.

Its a real, working SPACESHIP tested and approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Last December, this spaceship completed a successful test flight with two astronauts and a passenger on board. It blasted to the edge of earths atmosphere, 51.4 miles up then safely landed just outside Orlando, Florida.

Now, the company is preparing to launch the first commercial space flight in history, which is expected to take off as soon as 2020.

For the first time, civilians will have a chance to shuttle around in outer space.

The good news is you can be one of the first investors to buy the worlds first spaceship stock. And as Ill explain its an investment opportunity you should take seriously, just like these three I told you about before.

Virgin Galactic is an ultra-luxury tourism company, for now...

Virgin Galactic has already sold out its first batch of 600 flight tickets for a hefty fare of $250,000 collecting over $80 million. Another 1,500+ rich folks are on the waiting list.

As I mentioned before, the first passengers include celebrities like pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio

Which led investors to label Virgin Galactic an ultra-luxury tourism company. Ive heard folks compare it to companies renting 300-foot-long yachts or private islands.

But make no mistake, Virgin Galactics ships are much more than a playground for rich people. Thats just step one in its plan to disrupt the space industry.

Space tourism is just a testing ground

Virgin Galactic has a unique business model that will let it earn hundreds of millions of dollars right out of the gate.

As a testing ground, it will sell its space flights to very rich folks as an expensive vacation.

And believe it or not, theres a huge market for this service.

The company says it needs to fly only 1,000 people a year to be a viable business. As I mentioned, there are already 1,500 on its waitlist and the company has barely marketed the concept at all.

If Virgin Galactic pulls this off, it will rake in $250 million in its first year as a public company. Thats 2X more than Amazon and Apple earned in their first years combined, as you can see below

RiskHedge

While the company rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars by pleasing ultra-rich folks, it will quietly start preparing for the next phase of space travel.

Virgin Galactic is coming to disrupt dreaded long-haul flights

Virgin Galactic sees an opportunity to disrupt long-haul travel by flying folks through outer space.

These flights can potentially get you from, say, New York to Tokyo in two hours as opposed to the 14 hours it takes today. And the company is making great strides toward it.

Virgin Galactic has recently joined forces with Boeing, the worlds largest plane-maker. They are developing a commercial spaceship that will travel at 5X the speed of sound 7X faster than todays commercial planes.

Within a decade, space travel will be a $23 billion industry and threaten airlines, according to UBS. And Virgin Galactic is positioned to be the unquestioned leader in this space.

Virgin Galactic is quietly tapping into an $800 billion industry

Air travel is an $800 billion a year industry. UBS estimates the space industry will be worth $805 billion by 2030. And space travel is just a tiny part of it.

Virgin Galactic is planning to use its spaceships to conduct science experiments, launch small satellites, and bring other cargo to space.

The possibilities are endless.

For example, president of Virgin Galactic Will Whitehorn thinks we could put computer servers powering the internet in space quite easily.

You see whats happening?

Most investors dismiss Virgin Galactics space flights as a gimmick. But the company is actually an up-and-coming space giant.

How to buy the worlds first commercial space stock

Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic announced it would merge with Social Capital Hedosophia (IPOA), a publicly traded shell company. The company will buy a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic.

That makes Social Capital Hedosophia the first publicly traded space stock available to the public.

I have to warn you, though.

The upside of this company is limitless. You would be buying into the very early stage of the company as well as the commercial space industry.

Social Capital Hedosophia is worth a little shy of a billion today, and its going after an $800 billion industry. Theres plenty of room for the company to grow 10X or more.

It could be like investing in Boeing right after it rolled the first Boeing 707 out of the hangar in 1957 a moment that changed aviation for good.

That said, Virgin Galactic has a very small margin for error. Any accident threatening human lives could send Virgin Galactic stock plunging down.

My recommendation: Put a small position in this stock, just like I did a couple of months ago. Make it small enough that big a drop in its price wouldnt hurt you badly.

Get our report"The Great Disruptors:3 Breakthrough Stocks Set to Double Your Money".These stocks will hand you 100% gains as they disrupt whole industries.Get your free copy here.

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Now You Can Buy The Worlds First Spaceship Stock - Forbes

Army Col. Drew Morgans list of accomplishments is extensive: graduate of West Point and member of the schools title-winning parachute team; ER doctor; battalion surgeon for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), where he maintained his flight, dive and airborne qualifications; deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa; husband; father ... and NASA astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station.

Yet Morgan, who was hurtling through space at 17,150 miles per hour Wednesday and completed a harrowing 7-hour space walk earlier this month, choked up at the beginning of a live link with students from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Maryland, where he is an alumnus.

Its such an honor to be with you. I have tears in my eyes, Morgan said, holding up a pennant bearing the USUHS logo. The Uniformed Services University is a center of excellence for military medicine, and Im so proud to be a part of your team.

Morgan has been in space since July 20, when he, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano blasted off from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz MS spacecraft. Like all astronauts on the ISS, Morgan is a jack-of-all-trades, conducting spacewalks, working on robotics, repairing the stations systems and managing research.

But on Wednesday, he took time out to discuss what its like to be in space with soon-to-be military physicians.

Commissioned in 1998, Morgans spent several tours overseas, deploying with special operations forces to Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries. On those deployments, he used his skills as an emergency medical doctor to set bones, stitch wounds and save lives. In space, however, he uses his hands to install refrigerator-sized batteries on the outside of the space station, run experiments and occasionally deals with bumps, bruises and other minor ailments that affect astronauts.

An additional duty is crew medical officer, so when there is a physician on board, obviously Im a natural choice for that," he said.

When hes not conducting long space walks, Morgan largely is doing research, with more than 300 experiments on the ISS, including biological and human studies that have a goal of facilitating medical breakthroughs and understanding the effects of long-duration space travel.

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This past summer, the ISS acquired a biological 3D printer a BioFabrication Facility, or BFF to print human tissue from adult human cells and tissue-derived proteins, with an aim to eventual fabricate complex tissues, like organs, in space where gravity isnt a factor in supporting tissue shapes.

He and his fellow space travelers also are working on experiments using novel protein crystals that show potential for developing cancer medications and medications to fight Alzheimers and Parkinsons, he said.

Theres a lot of relevance for military medicine, Morgan told the students. When we grow tissues in culture on Earth we are required to use a scaffold. With [this] we are able to potentially grow structures we wouldnt be able to do on earth, it has some real potential and applications.

In earlier interviews, Morgan said his interest in space began as a child in Texas, where he saw the space shuttle fly overhead. In fourth grade, he was required to write a letter to a famous Texan; he chose Apollo astronaut Alan Bean, who actually wrote him back, and the seed was planted.

On Wednesday, he told the military medical students he wanted first to be a soldier. Then, while at the U.S. Military Academy, he decided to become a doctor. Finally, after serving with and caring for soldiers, he revisited his childhood dream to become an astronaut. He began training for his current flight since 2013.

Many of the experiments Morgan works on aboard the ISS focus on developing technologies and solutions for longer space missions, including NASAs Artemis program to put the first woman and another man on the Moon by 2024, as well as extended exploration of the lunar surface and eventually, sending astronauts to Mars.

Morgan said it would be doctors in this room who will help guide the medical research and health care needed to care for those future space travelers.

The room you are sitting in is filled with people who are going to help us tackle some of these problems of how we deal with surgical emergencies far away. Is this something well do robotically with remote guidance or is this something that well have a crew member trained ... so they could comfortably perform a surgical operation? I dont know that we know how we are going to deal with that yet, he said.

Since arriving at the ISS, Morgan has conducted three spacewalks, including one on Oct. 6 with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch, during which he lost some material on the palm of his glove a potential threat to his protective space suits integrity. His tether became snarled on the ISS as he returned after a long day to the airlock, and the pair installed a battery that later was found to be broken.

Morgan said he relies heavily on his special operations training, first during his NASA training, and now, when potentially life-threatening problems occur.

Out-of-the-box thinking is one of the hallmarks of special operations always being the thought leader, on the cutting edge of how to solve problems under ambiguous circumstances with limited resources, Morgan said. [In Special Forces training], humans are more important than hardware. The emphasis is put on our people and developing them. Its something NASA does well and it was part of my operational skill set.

In the audience on Wednesday were two of Morgans former Army medics, Army 2nd Lt. Steve Radloff and Army Master Sgt. Daniel Morissette. Radloff is a 4th year medical student at USUHS; Morissette is in the schools Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program, hoping attend USUHS next year.

Radloff asked what lessons Morgan learned on crisis management on board the ISS, but Morgan was so excited to hear from him that he forgot the question.

You are some of the finest examples of medical professionals I have ever encountered," he said to his former medics. The greatest honor of my life was serving alongside you guys and many medics just like you. It warms my heart to see you so successful there.

Morissette later said Morgans heartfelt reply to Radloff was just one example of his humility.

Hes always been supportive of me, of what I was trying to achieve, regardless of what he had going on. When I was applying for this program, he was in the midst of his train-up for his launch, and he made time [to help me], Morissette said.

With his wife, Stacey, and four children at home, Morgan has, and will, miss many events while in space: anniversaries, sports games, school achievements, holidays. On Wednesday, Navy Ensign Ted Johnson reminded him he also will miss the Army-Navy football game on Dec. 14.

Good afternoon, Col. Morgan, my name is Ensign Ted Johnson, USU Class of 22, Naval Academy Class of 18, Go Navy, Beat Army, Johnson said.

Not likely, Morgan retorted.

Morgan and Parmitano are scheduled to make five spacewalks in November to repair the ISSs Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, cosmic-ray detector. All space walks can be watched live on NASA TV.

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Army astronaut to military medical students: You will solve the health issues of extended space flight - ArmyTimes.com

The Hope Mars Mission, also called the Emirates Mars Mission, is the first uncrewed, interplanetary satellite spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates. In fact, the Hope satellite is the first planetary science mission led by an Arab-Islamic country. And the United Arab Emirates has not shied away from making lofty goals for the spacecraft.

When Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, announced in July 2014 that the Emirates would send a satellite to Mars, he said that the launch date would be in July 2020, only six years from his announcement. That timing coincides with the alignment of Earth and Mars, which occurs once every two years. It also means the spacecraft should reach Mars in 2021, the year of the 50th anniversary of the United Arab Emirates' formation. The Emirati government later said it also planned to build a habitable settlement on Mars by 2117.

But the United Arab Emirates Space Agency the government agency tasked with developing and regulating a world-class space sector for the United Arab Emirates was established only in 2014, the same year that the Al-Amal (Arabic for "hope") mission was announced. And it wasn't until April 2015 that Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, established the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, where the Hope satellite would actually be built. That left the country with little time to reach its target launch date.

Related: A Brief History of Mars Missions

"We chose the epic challenge of reaching Mars because epic challenges inspire and motivate us," Mohammed bin Rashid said in the 2014 statement. "The moment we stop taking on such challenges is the moment we stop moving forward."

The United Arab Emirates Space Agency has faced those challenges head-on and accelerated forward. As of April 2019, the country had completed roughly 85% of the Hope probe, according to an article in Gulf News. And in September 2019, the United Arab Emirates sent its first Emirati astronaut into space. Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, a former pilot, spent eight days on the International Space Station, where he performed a series of experiments and gave a tour of the station in Arabic.

"The UAE is on the verge of making history, after turning its dream of becoming the first Arabic and Islamic country to send a spacecraft to Mars into reality," said Ahmad Belhoul al Falasi, chairman of the United Arab Emirates Space Agency. "This monumental endeavor is the culmination of the efforts of a skilled and experienced team of young Emiratis, who, with the support of the nation and its visionary leadership, will secure the UAE's position at the forefront of space exploration and the international space sector."

Built in collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder, University of California, Berkeley, and Arizona State University, the Hope spacecraft is in many ways a state-of-the-art weather satellite. It will help answer some outstanding questions about Mars' climate and atmosphere. The satellite mission has four primary objectives:

Artistic rendition of what the Hope satellite will look like. It's essentially designed to be a state-of-the-art weather satellite.

(Image credit: UAE Space Agency)

The Hope satellite will have a total mass (including fuel) of 3,300 lbs. (1,500 kilograms), according to NASA. And at about 7.78 feet (2.37 meters) wide and 9.51 feet (2.90 m) tall, the probe will be about the size and weight of a small car. Four to six 120-newton Delta V thrusters will propel the spacecraft using hydrazine, and inorganic and highly volatile chemical.

After seven to nine months of space travel, the probe will approach its orbit around Mars in May 2021, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Arab Emirates. The spacecraft will then collect two years' worth of scientific data, with an optional two-year extension that would take the mission into 2025.

Hope will collect the scientific data using three state-of-the-art technologies mounted on the satellite:

The Emirates called the satellite "Hope" because its manufacture and scientific data would hopefully provide value for the future in two major ways: helping scientists understand how atmospheres evolve over time and helping to modernize the Arab world.

Understanding how factors such as sunlight, dust and temperature affect the entire Martian atmosphere each day and throughout the seasons could also illuminate details about the atmosphere around the Earth and even planets around other solar systems, called exoplanets, according to the missions scientific goals. Scientists could also use the information to model the future of Earth's atmosphere, such as how it may evolve under the forces of climate change.

Related: 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars

The Emirati government has also said that it sees this satellite as a way to bring the Arab world back to the forefront of science and astronomy a position the region hasn't held since the Islamic Golden Age, from the ninth century to the 13th century. During that time, the Muslim world was the stronghold of knowledge in philosophy, math, astronomy and medicine. The Arabs made pioneering strides in algebra and trigonometry and further developed astronomical tools such as sundials. But since the end of its halcyon days, the Arab world has statistically made little contribution to science, according to a review in The New Atlantis.

The Hope satellite is an attempt to help change that.

"This is the Arab world's version of President John F. Kennedy's moonshot it's a vision for the future that can engage and excite a new generation of Emirati and Arab youth," said Yousef al Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador to the United States, during the UAE Embassy's National Day celebration in 2015, The National reported.

The Emirati government invested over $5.5 billion into space-exploration efforts, according to The National. And as the first-ever Arab-Islamic mission to another planet using a satellite built entirely by a Muslim nation, Hope is expected to help catalyze the development of a new generation of Arab scientists and engineers. They, in turn, will help shift the country's economic system away from the oil industry and prepare it for a world that depends less on oil, Sarah Amiri, the mission's science lead, told Scientific American in 2016. As of July 2019, more than 70 Emirati scientists and engineers, almost all under age 35, were working on the mission. That number is expected to grow to 150 by 2020, according to Smithsonian.com.

Additional resources:

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Hope Mars Mission: Launching the Arab World into the Space Race - Space.com

In order for man to walk on the moon, they must understand the wide-ranging effects that space travel can have on the body and prepare astronauts to endure them. Studying the physiological changes the body undergoes outside Earths atmosphere and keeping astronauts healthy during these missions has created a specialized area of study: space medicine.

The military has contributed to both space medicine and space travel throughout the decades, with doctors from the Military Health System providing insight and operational expertise to the health and safety of astronauts. Graduates of the Uniformed Services University for Health Sciences, or USU, are a prime example of these contributions, not onlycurrently serving in space onboard NASA missionsbut stationed on the ground as flight surgeons to keep those astronauts in peak health before, during, and after their missions.

Theres a uniqueness to what we do in space medicine, said Dr. Richard Scheuring, medical operations flight surgeon at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and associate professor of military and emergency medicine at USU.

After unmanned spacecraft flights by the United States and the Soviet Union succeeded in the late 1950s and NASAs first man-in-space program, Project Mercury, took shape in 1958, the role of space medicine became critical to mission success.

Despite this importance, space medicine was still a relatively unknown field for years according to Dr. Jonathan Clark, one of the first medical graduates of USU and current adjunct professor of neurology and space medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

You can trace the term back to the 1940s, Clark said, but I found out about the field through pure luck.

Originally a neurologist by trade, combining his experience as a naval flight officer with the medical training he received at USU opened Clark up to the steadily growing field of space medicine. His additional aerospace experience and meeting his late wife Laurel who was beginning her career as a NASA astronaut led him to a job in space medicine at the same organization.

Scheuring also discovered space medicine by chance. I saw an ad in the back of the New England Journal of Medicine for a space medicine fellowship and I thought, thats something I would really like to do.

Since their humble introductions to space medicine, both Scheuring and Clark have had impacts on the field with their military expertise and published research. Scheuring and a team of collaborators co-wrote the militarys first textbook chapter on operating in space. The Borden InstitutesFundamentals of Military Medicineis now required reading for students at USU.

This was the first time weve written a book like this, Scheuring said. This is the expert reference manual for any doctor going into military medicine now. Were really proud of this textbook.

Clarks contributions to space medicine were made as a member of the Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Team, formed after the Columbia Disaster of 2003 in which the spacecraft disintegrated upon reentering the Earths atmosphere on its 28th space voyage. Clarks wife Laurel was one of the seven astronauts lost during the mission. TheColumbia Crew Survival Investigation Report, released in 2008, and asecond reportreleased in 2014, helped improve safety measures for astronauts exploring space.

You dont think about bad things happening in space, Clark said, but we did two really good reports [on the mission], which broached a whole new area of study that didnt have a lot published on it yet.

The influences of Clark and Scheuring on space medicine have not only shaped the current state of the field but its future too, as they both teach the subject to prospective medical students at their universities. Scheuring and Clark helped spearhead focuses in space medicine at USU and Baylor respectively, with interest in the field growing as a result of each program.

At this stage of my career, its all about passing the torch, Clark said of students in Baylors Center for Space Medicine. Clarks program merges the research aspects of space medicine with education, allowing the students to collaborate with space science professionals.

Our medical students get training in space medicine at all different year groups, Clark said, and what better way to integrate the next generation into the field than by having them solve real world problems?

Scheurings program at USU also grooms students for careers in space medicine through aerospace clerkships at NASA and Operation Bushmaster. The simulated mass casualty exercise, required of all fourth-year medical students at USU as well as some students in the graduate school of nursing, gives the students hands-on experience in a military mission.

The USU student is a very unique, Scheuring said of his own mentees, Very operationally focused, they may not have the experience yet but taking them out into the field, seeing them use all the skills theyve learned in a very demanding, fatiguing, compromised environment and having them perform at high levels? Its super rewarding.

Scheuring thinks that this operational focus is an asset that the military brings to space medicine.

Being book smart is one thing, but you have to be boots on the ground, Scheuring said. You need doctors that understand the mission, the environment, the physiology, all the things that help successfully execute that mission.

As far as the future of space medicine and the military is concerned, Clark thinks there is still much to learn. You have to learn everything you possibly can about space to truly understand how to make it safer for those who follow, Clark said.

Clark hopes that his research on space accidents and the students he is mentoring will aid in the mission of safer space travel. Scheuring, on the other hand, is more unsure about the logistics of space medicines future. But he does know that his students will be a major part of it.

I would like to think that well have [Department of Defense] flight surgeons, space surgeons, and astronauts come out of this program one day where this was their first exposure to NASA, Scheuring said. Youre going to have a couple dozen graduates who have operational exposure, which otherwise never existed.

Read the rest here:

Space Medicine: Military docs help to explore the final frontier - Stripes Japan

Updated October 19, 2019 12:05:54

In 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders took a photo which had a profound impact on the way humankind saw itself.

Known as Earthrise, the photo taken from a spacecraft in lunar orbit showed our planet rising above the horizon of the moon.

When it was published, the image had a galvanising effect on the environmental movement, fulfilling a prophecy of English cosmologist Fred Hoyle.

Two decades earlier, Professor Hoyle had written that a photograph of the Earth from space would create "a new idea as powerful as any in history".

The Earthrise photo made it easier for humanity to see itself as a whole, and to glimpse what was at stake if we trashed our planetary home.

Ever since, the image has been regarded as a moral stimulant a reminder of the fragility of human existence and of our collective destiny on "spaceship Earth".

But not everybody who shared those concerns was on board.

A few years before Mr Anders took his iconic snap, an ebullient English historian and pacifist, Arnold J. Toynbee, began publicly voicing reservations about the entire space program.

Professor Toynbee's main objection was an ethical one; space was costing money and vital resources at a time when humanity faced bigger challenges, such as poverty and the threat of nuclear war.

He dismissed the space race as a "childish competition" between two superpowers, and suggested it was premature to be looking to the moon and stars when our own house was not in order.

"It's rather scandalous, when human beings are going short of necessities, to do this," Professor Toynbee said.

There has been a lot of hype around space.

Last year, the Federal Government announced the creation of a new Australian Space Agency (ASA), while the United States President, Donald Trump, has committed NASA to a five-year plan to go back to the moon and push on to Mars.

To do that, Mr Trump wanted to increase the agency's $US20-billion budget for 2020 by $US1.6 billion, and Scott Morrison has pledged $150 million to secure Australian involvement in the project.

But the deadline has led some of the industry's most prominent supporters including astronaut Andy Thomas to express concerns.

"Unrealistic schedule expectations can be very dangerous in the spaceflight business and we know that from experience," Dr Thomas told ABC Radio Adelaide last month.

Climate change has also caused some to rethink human involvement in space.

"Let's be clear. If we had the same enthusiasm and the same budget available for the technologies to solve some of the problems we have now, we'd probably be able to do it," said renewable energy advocate Giles Parkinson.

"Money that's thrown at things like space travel, and exploration for oil and gas that's money that could also be spent on addressing the climate change issue."

Mr Parkinson said he was not opposed to space exploration, but he questioned levels of investment at a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted dangerous warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius within decades.

"The other thing that disturbs me is this idea that space travel might be our saviour," Mr Parkinson said.

"It seems to be loading the dice and taking enormous risks to think that if we stuff this planet up, because of global warning and other environmental impacts, then we can all live happily on another planet."

One person who proposed to do just that was Elon Musk, who joked that he wanted to die on Mars but not on impact.

"He's done a lot of great things for space," said Nikki Coleman, a Canberra-based researcher and military chaplain.

"He has inspired a whole generation of young people, but I still think he needs oversight.

"I don't think we should be allowing people to just be able to invest and do whatever they want."

Dr Coleman and her husband Stephen Coleman are experts in an emerging field called space ethics at the University of New South Wales.

They have both been proponents of human involvement in space, but believed ethical considerations should play a stronger role in steering it.

"We rely so much on space now in ways that people don't even realise," Professor Coleman said.

"I don't think it's possible to say 'well, let's just leave space alone'.

"It costs a lot to do this, but what does it cost to not do it?"

There have been plenty of examples of space technology leading to ongoing benefits on terra firma: food production, communication, transport navigation (including planes), and weather prediction all heavily rely on satellites.

"Climate projections are using a lot of space-based technology," Professor Coleman said.

"Realistically, there's no climate scientist in the world who's not using space-based resources and space-based research to assist them if you look at what's happening in Greenland with the ice sheet; they're using satellites for that."

But there have been concerns about the so-called "militarisation" of space, and fears of a space arms race in which countries compete to launch satellites with hostile intent.

"In June of last year, President Trump announced the forthcoming formation of a sixth branch of the US military a so-called Space Force," said physician and anti-nuclear campaigner, Tilman Ruff.

Professor Ruff helped to establish the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and believes more thought needs to be given to how space could trigger nuclear conflict.

"If satellites were disrupted to provide a false alert of an attack, or to disable communications between facilities and forces in different places, then it's a real can of worms in terms of unpredictable escalation."

One of the ways in which space could become a de facto military frontline is through the weaponisation of space junk and debris.

It sounds bizarre but it would involve a hypothetical scenario known as the Kessler syndrome, which describes the potential effects of space junk colliding with a satellite.

"One collision might create so much junk that it starts a chain reaction where you just can't avoid collisions again, and you get more and more pieces of junk piling up, more and more satellites being destroyed, more and more pieces of debris," Professor Coleman said.

Experts have said it was more than plausible, and it has been on the ASA's radar, which has committed to minimising space junk.

"Applications for the launch of an Australian satellite overseas, or a launch to space from Australia, include consideration of the space environment, including space debris," the ASA said in a statement.

Currently, there are millions of artificial objects in orbit around the Earth.

"We keep putting more stuff up there and it's really hard to keep track," Professor Coleman said.

"In low-Earth orbit, it's moving around at many kilometres per second, so an impact between these things has huge consequences."

Recent research by Dr Coleman has focused on the likelihood of terrorist groups trying to trigger this scenario, especially as the cost of launching satellites decreases.

"Non-state groups can actually use space debris deliberately against developed nations to knock out our infrastructure," she said.

Another hot topic in space ethics has been safety, including for astronauts and future space tourists.

While the nature of space means there will always be a huge risk, Dr Coleman described Elon Musk's push to get to Mars as "ethically really problematic", and her husband agreed.

"One of the main issues there, for example, is radiation," Professor Coleman said.

"If that's literally a mission that takes years for those astronauts, what are the effects of years of exposure to that level of radiation?

"We really don't know."

So should we be looking to the stars to secure our future, or should we be focusing our efforts closer to home?

"There's one area of potential use of space-based technology that I think we should develop and invest in further," Dr Ruff said.

"Of all the existential threats, one that is not of our making is [the] potential for [a] collision of the Earth with a large celestial body.

"A collective effort to try and predict such dangers and address them effectively does seem to me one of the few things we should be doing in space."

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First posted October 19, 2019 06:30:00

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Space is about to get a funding boost but there are ethical questions to consider, experts say - ABC News

History was made on Oct. 18, 2019, when Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Jessica Meir of NASA finished the first all-female spacewalk. For roughly seven hours, the two women replaced a battery and performed a series of maintenance tasks on the orbiting lab. This landmark mission was technically supposed to have happened seven months earlier, but it was abruptly canceled due to the explanation thatNASA didn't have two suits that fit.

Koch has been on board the space station March 14, doing scientific research as part of the Expedition 59 crew. She is scheduled to remain in orbit until February 2020; that mission will set a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. The nearly year-long stay in space will also give scientists a chance to study the long-term effects of a spaceflight on women.

"Astronauts demonstrate amazing resilience and adaptability in response to long duration spaceflight exposure," said Jennifer Fogarty, chief scientist of the Human Research Program, in a NASA press release. "These opportunities have also demonstrated that there is a significant degree of variability in the responses of humans to spaceflight, and it is important to determine the acceptable degree of change for both men and women."

So far, the majority of research has been on men, most notably by former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days in space in 2015-2016.

We've been launching Earthlings into space for 58 years now, but only 11% of them have been women. In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. It took 20 years for NASA to follow suit, with Sally Ride becoming the first American woman in space in 1983. To give you an idea of how far we've come in gender-based stereotypes, NASA actually designed a makeup kit in 1978 Ride opted not to use it.

American, Japanese and Russian crew members gather for a group portrait in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station in April 2010. (Photo: NASA [public domain]/Wikimedia Commons)

When it comes to men, vision change is the biggest challenge when spending an extended amount of time in antigravity. Around half of the male astronauts who've journeyed to space have developed an intracranial pressure that reshapes their optic nerve and changes their eyesight. Women are not affected, and doctors are still at a loss to explain why.

However, women are more likely to feel sick going into space, while men are prone to re-entry sickness and diminished hearing when coming back to Earth. Doctors are also unsure if these are hormonal differences or physiological changes.

In an interview with the BBC, Dr. Varsha Jain, a space gynecologist for NASA, explained that menstruation and toilets are also an additional challenge for women especially because engineers never factored in blood when building the International Space Station.

"In space, urine isn't wasted, it's recycled and drinking water is reclaimed from it," notes Jain. "Period blood is considered a solid material and none of the toilets on the space station can differentiate solid from liquid material, therefore the water in it is lost and not recycled." Jain adds that many female astronauts take a contraceptive pill or use an IUD to stop their period altogether.

Reproductive health is also a concern for both genders. Astronauts are at risk of radiation exposure while in space, but how that impacts their fertility is still unknown. "The quality of sperm and sperm count decreases after space travel, but then sperm regenerates back on Earth, so there is no known long-term damage," Jain says. "Women are born with all the eggs they need for their lifetime, so NASA is very supportive of female astronauts freezing their eggs before their missions."

Both male and female astronauts have successfully had children after completing a mission. But overall, Jain describes the physiological changes that happen to both men and women as an "accelerated aging process." Astronauts actually lose bone mass when they go into space, and much of it is never regained, despite the recovery countermeasures and programs in place back home.

As NASA continues to make sending humans to Mars their priority, more women should be launching into space to prepare for these future missions. Adds astronaut Koch: Any time you increase the diversity of a pool of folks participating in any of those human research studies, you make the results of those studies more robust. Were happy to be participating in those and to get the numbers up.

Space affects women's and men's bodies in different ways

From nearsightedness to bone mass, a trip to the International Space System has a notable effect on astronauts' bodies.

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Space affects women's and men's bodies in different ways - Mother Nature Network

Today, and tomorrow's, astronauts will ride in style.

Although much of the focus on 20th century space travel was, for good reason, focused on space shuttles and the missions astronauts took part in, one particular ground vehicle also happened to capture the hearts of so many: the Astrovan.

As of Monday, the world is no longer void of a vehicle prepared to carry astronauts to the launch pad as Airstream revealed the appropriately titled Astrovan II. The vehicle, built as a modified Airstream Atlas Touring Coach, will first go into service starting in 2020. Then, it will carry the first astronauts for a crewed mission onboard the Boeing-built CST-100 Starliner.

With room for eight astronauts, the Astrovan II doesn't necessarily invoke the same charm as the original Astrovan, but its purpose is nonetheless significant.

Americans looked on in awe as individuals prepared to tackle a whole new frontier in the 20th century, and Astrovan II continues that tradition. The vehicle will carry three astronauts next year, who will then board CST-100 Starliner for a mission to the International Space Station. Airstream's had the honor of this role since 1969.

Special graphics adorn the sides of the Astrovan II that show off the CST-100 Starliner, and Boeing's company colors, silver and blue, wrap the rest of the vehicle. Inside, the cockpit's eight seats are specially tailored to make room for a suit pressurization device that astronauts will take with them when boarding CST-100 Starliner. Additionally, there's livestreaming tech inside so fans can watch as crews travel to the launch pad.

Astronvan II has already effectively earned its place in history. While the original vehicle sits on display in NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex, it can rest easy knowing Astrovan II is prepared for duty. Who knows where the astronauts it carries will be heading to in the future.

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Astrovan II is ready to carry America's astronauts to liftoff - CNET

As avid viewers of science-fiction films and television series, the fictional practice of space travel fascinates us. Seeing how different sci-fi universes handle faster-than-light travel is endlessly entertaining.

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What is so great about this particular aspect of sci-fi is how different franchises will handle it. They'll call FTL travel by different names, use varying pieces of technology to utilize it, and be totally unique inhow they make it appear. For today, we're going to go over the best sci-fi methods of FTL travel. Read on if you want to find out which movies and series handled it the best.

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Younger viewers might not recall the filmEvent Horizon. It was a thrilling sci-fi romp that involved demonic horrors leaking onto a ship thanks to some FTL travel gone wrong. The ship is using an experimental gravity drive meant to reduce the time it takes to travel through space by creating an artificial black hole for portal purposes. Unfortunately for the crew of the ship, this little hole in space-time leads directly to hell. And we mean that quite literally. This mode of FTL travel gets bonus points for being directly involved in the film's plot complications.

Call it what you will, this device is just one of those insane FTL inventions made to masquerade as teleportation. A Boom Tube is used to create openings across space and time that people, vehicles, and armies can use to traverse great distances.

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And by great distances, we mean the space between universes. DC Comics struck gold with this idea because how else were the denizens of Apokolips and New Genesis supposed to terrorize Earth? Boom Tube technology featured heavily in the DC filmJustice League, and if the film gets a sequel, you can bet it will involve more Mother Boxes.

ThoughBattlestar Galactica didn't have a snazzy name for their faster-than-light travel (they just called them "FTL jumps," really), this mode of transportation boosted itself up on this list thanks to the random chance it uses. For those of you who haven't seen the hit sci-fi show, just know that luck has more to do with "jumps" than coordinates. And for those of you who have seen the show, we will never listen to the song "All Along the Watchtower" in the same way ever again.

Granted,Dead Space started as a video game, but it has an animated film, too, so we thought we'd include it here anyways. Plus, its FTL travel is delightfully named. InDead Space, space ships travel using ShockPoint drives. This means that when a ship is about to travel faster than the speed of light, crew members will frequently say, "We're about to shock out."

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That's a colloquial way of stating that the ship is about to enter ShockSpace, which functions as a sort of space thatisn't space. It's like a bubble in space and time. For the simple pleasure of saying "shock out," we had to includeDead Space's method of FTL travel on this list.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has its own method of FTL travel, but we wouldn't have included it if it hadn't been for the insane scene inGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Yondu, Rocket, Kraglin, and Groot make 700 "jumps" through space-time in order to reach the rest of the team on Ego's planet in time. That many jumps takes a hilarious toll on their bodies, distorting them in funny, bubbly ways. It might be a spot of juvenile humor, but hey, if FTL travel can make you laugh, we count that as a win.

Like withDead Space,Halo is primarily a video game, but since it has some live-action features and specials within its franchise, we thought we'd sneak it on here anyway.Halo's method of FTL travel is called Slipspace.

RELATED: 10 Of The Best Sci-Fi Space Ships Ever, Ranked

Using Shaw-Fujikawa Drives (a fictional drive named after a fictional person in theHalo universe), space ships will enter Slipspace at one point, and then exit it after having traveled vast distances. Random jumps into Slipspace can be made, but watch out. You could find yourself next to a Halo ring if you try it.

Black holes are terrifying things when you stop to think about it, but in Christopher Nolan's mind-bending filmInterstellar, human astronauts use them to travel faster than the speed of light. Though the movie's black-hole travel is not named anything fancy, it earned a high spot on this list thanks to its unconventional depiction in the film. Plus, the amount of thought that goes into comprehending the differences in time for those in the black hole and those left on Earth is gargantuan. In fact, it's an integral part of the film.

No one who thinks of FTL travel in film can help but remember the streaks of stars whizzing past the Millennium Falcon as it made the jump to hyperspace. It is perhaps the most iconic form of FTL travel, especially in terms of visuals. Plus, the colloquial term "lightspeed" just sounds perfect for describing the mode of transportation. No other film has made FTL travel sound so cool and catchy asStar Wars. Instead of the gut-wrenching terror you would feel if you actually hurtled through space at the speed of light, all you feel is a thrill of excitement.

While it might attract the ire ofStar Wars fans everywhere,Star Trek's warp speed had to be higher on the list at the very least because it was made years before the firstStar Wars film. Any Trekkie worth their salt knows the importance of the warp engine to travel on the final frontier. You can't go where no man's gone before traveling on impulse engines alone, right? If you want to have a truly interstellar voyage, you've got to go warp.

The zaniest, unlikeliest, and, therefore, best mode of FTL travel has to go toThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Infinite Improbability Drive. This strange device of propulsion was made to travel toevery single point in the universe before depositing the lucky ship it was housed in exactly where it wanted to go. This happens in the mere nothing of less than a second. Not much is known as tohow it does this, but, suffice it to say, improbabilities have a lot to do with it. And when it comes to ranking FTL travel in a science-fiction world, the acknowledgement of how improbable the whole venture is makes Infinite Improbability the coolest means of transportation.

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FTL: The 10 Best Versions Of Space Travel In Sci-Fi Movies & Shows, Ranked - Screen Rant

PENDLETON Before introducing retired NASA engineer Jim McBarron to the students assembled in the Pendleton High School auditorium Monday, organizer James Loftus said there were two types of people in life those who looked at the sky and those that looked at the ground.

It was meant as a metaphor, but McBarron did spend a chunk of his life looking at the ground.

McBarron spent his career working on equipment for some of the countrys most important space missions, culminating in a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Richard Nixon in 1971, but his undergraduate degree isnt in aeronautics or engineering, but geology.

The son of a restaurant owner and a nurse, McBarron grew up in Lima, a small town in Northwest Ohio.

When McBarron went to school an hour south at the University of Dayton, he originally majored in physics before his struggles in applied math caused his academic advisor to suggest switching to geology.

During high school and college, McBarron worked a series of odd jobs car washer, Christmas tree lot salesman, movie theater usher, and bartender.

When he caught on as a test subject for the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Aeromedical Laboratory in 1958, the work was a lot more exotic and much more grueling.

To simulate the extreme conditions of space travel, McBarron was ordered to do tests like sitting in a hot box that could reach temperatures of 200 degrees or dip into an ice water tank that averaged minus-20 degrees.

McBarron did all this for $1.85 per hour, $3 per hour for hazardous tests, but he had found his career path.

NASA offered him a job as an aerospace technologist in 1961, changing his life trajectory.

If he hadnt joined NASA, McBarron told the audience he would likely take over his familys restaurant, an offer he declined once he found his passion for space engineering.

While McBarron would go on to lead a distinguished career at NASA, it almost ended before it began.

McBarron was working with a team of engineers on the space suit for Project Mercury, Americas first human spaceflight program, when they noticed a faulty zipper.

McBarron acted quickly and sent the suit to NASAs contractor to get it fixed, but when his boss found out that he did it without the proper authorization, he threatened to have McBarron arrested.

Every decision you make has a consequence, he said as a word of advice to his young audience.

McBarron never ended up in jail, and he contributed to the Apollo program and the International Space Station over the course of his 39-year career at NASA.

At 81, he still lends his expertise to NASA as a consultant on Project Artemis, NASAs program to get Americans back on the moon by 2024.

McBarron came to Pendleton as a part of a tour of Eastern Oregon organized by Loftus, NASA, and the Pacific Power Foundation.

The director of the Joseph Phillip Loftus Jr. Mobile Museum in Stayton, Loftus said the idea originated from a similar trip former NASA engineer Norman Chaffee made to Pendleton in 2017.

Loftus said the hope is to do a trip to Eastern Oregon every other year. McBarron will visit La Grande and Baker City before concluding his trip in Wallowa County.

Pendleton School District Superintendent Chris Fritsch said the school invited students from Umatilla and Ukiah to participate in the event.

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NASA vet explains how he went from a small town boy to a space engineer - East Oregonian

After a seven month delay, today NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir finally carried out the first all-women spacewalk. Unlike in March, they now had two spacesuits of the correct size at the space station.

For some people, the spacesuit debacle has become symbolic of the inequality in space. After all, if there had been more women, there would have been earlier opportunities for two of them to need a well-fitting suit at the same time.

But long before the current space mission, some artists already used space suits to point out that space exploration has never been equally accessible to everyone. Both Cristina de Middel and Yinka Shonibare have used spacesuits in their art to highlight that predominantly Western nations have been to space.

Cristina de Middel speaks about her serie of photographs, The Afronauts, during the Lagos Photo ... [+] Festival on November 12, 2013. (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)

On the surface, space suits look like the ultimate equalizer. Theyre bulky, somewhat shapeless, and hide most of the astronaut. It seems like a uniform that everyone can wear - but in reality, not everyone has.

Setting aside the issue of gender in space for a moment, another inequality is that of nationality. Of the more than five hundred humans who have been in orbit, more than half have been American. Russia and former Soviet states account for another fifth. A few Asian countries are starting to catch up to North American and Europe, but the rest of the world is underrepresented in space. Africa, in particular, is not doing well.

A few African countries have space agencies, but they mainly focus on satellites and remote sensing. None of them have launched crewed missions.

However, in 1964, Zambian Edward Makuka Nkoloso set up his own very quirky space agency, and was adamant that Zambians would be the first on the moon, thanks to his space programme, that - if we can judge it by archive footage - mostly involved people rolling down hills in barrels and jumping up and down.

The amateuristic and optimistic nature of the Zambian space program has inspired films and art works. One of them is Cristina de Middels 2012 work Afronauts. Through a method best described as fictional photojournalism, she photographed models as if they were part of a reimagined version of the Zambian space program.

In some photos from her collection, models in space suit pose as if theyre walking on the moon or a remote planet. But their suits are not the white plain space suit were familiar with. Theyre colorful, like some African fabrics are. Even without seeing the face of the astronaut, the suit identifies them as African.

De Middel is not the only one who recreated spacesuits with African-style patterned fabrics. For British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, the astronaut has been a recurring theme in his work. His series of Refugee Astronauts draw attention to survival on planet Earth, commenting on issues such as climate change. His use of patterned fabrics also gives these sculptures an African identity, and invokes thought of the process of Western globalization - and Western space exploration.

Yinka Shonibare's work Refugee Astronaut III, on display at the Wellcome Collection in London.

De Middels and Shonibares work incorporate space suits as a reminder of the lack of Africans in space. Meanwhile, Koch and Meirs real spacesuits have become a symbol of the shortage of women in space.

Now you might be asking yourself: Wasnt it just about size? Wouldnt two short men not have had the exact same problem? Oh, absolutely. There were never enough short people in the space program to warrant having enough available suits for them. But there would have been if there had been more women overall, who are shorter on average. This is one of those situations where everyone benefits from having more diversity overall.

Another common reaction to hearing that an entire spacewalk was delayed because of the wrong size suits is puzzlement. Isnt it so obvious? Its not...rocket science. No, its not, and thats exactly the problem.

Math and physics can take humans into space, but when it comes to humans - whether theyre in space or on Earth - we also need the social sciences, arts and humanities, to think about questions like the representation of different people in space, and of the practicalities of having the right equipment on board.

Its not rocket science, because theres more to space travel than rockets alone.

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From Art To Space Walks: Space Suits As Symbols Of Equality - Forbes