How big a part will space travel play in average living throughout the coming century?
Source #1: What the Next 50 Years Hold for Human Spaceflight? Mike Wail
Purpose: To inform readers, particularly those with an interest in science, of the recent advancements in space travel scientists have made and their plans for exploration over the coming 50 years.
“As a result, by 2061, millions of people may well have gone to space, and thousands may be living there, experts say. We may see permanently manned outposts on the moon, and boots will likely have crunched into Mars’ red dirt.”
“Orbital tourist trips might not be far behind suborbital jaunts. Various companies — including Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX for short) — are developing crewed vehicles that could take paying customers to the International Space Station.”
“Those other commercial opportunities may include mining asteroids for precious metals, or extracting the moon’s ample water stores to produce rocket fuel, which would be sold to spaceships at orbiting filling stations.”
This article fits into my line of inquiry because it explains, in general terms, what space travel will look like for the rest of the century. It briefly goes over human settlement on Mars, the resources we’ll harvest from other planets and asteroids, the future of rockets and rovers we’ll use to explore and even luxury space station vacations NASA will offer to anyone who can afford it. This article is short, but it covers a lot of ground in terms of different aspects of space exploration and dependency.
Source #2: What is the future of space travel? Royal Museums Greenwich
Purpose: A summary of the many ways we’ll rely on outer space in the coming future, ranging between exploration, leisure, and settlement.
“A number of commercial companies are also developing spaceflight capabilities, including SpaceX founded by Elon Musk, Blue Origin established by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. By 2030, it has been estimated that the global space market could be worth £400 billion. Both space agencies and commercial companies have a number of different objectives for the next 50 years, including:
- Automated and robotic exploration of the Solar System and beyond
- Telescopic exploration of deep space
- Development of innovative spacecraft
- Crewed spaceflight and settlements on planets
- Space tourism
- Mining of other planets.”
“In the last decade, companies such as Virgin Galactic, Airbus and Blue Origin have begun developing commercial spacecraft to send private customers into space. Currently, businesses are taking reservations for trips into the upper atmosphere, where patrons can experience zero-gravity and observe the curvature of the Earth. NASA has also announced plans to allow private individuals to visit the International Space Station, with the first flights scheduled for 2020.”
“NASA has been set the ambitious goal of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028”
This article covered the same information as the first, but went a lot deeper in terms of specifics. It explained more about the business side of space travel, and the economic gains companies can make in growing/mining minerals on other planets and asteroids. It also went deeper into the planned future development of more advanced telescopes and rovers, which I thought was really interesting, because we can get a much better understanding of the unknown.
Source #3: This is how we’ll leave Earth for good Colin Stuart
Purpose: To explain to its audience, primarily those who worry about the future of our planet and climate change, of what it will look like to move the human population into space. It goes into great detail of what a space society will look like, how we’ll get there, farm materials, grow a staple food supply, raise and create families, and even stay fit and healthy.
A 2012 World Wildlife Fund report estimated that by 2030 we’ll need the equivalent of two planets in order to sustain our lifestyles. And it’s pretty much a certainty that we’ll have to move at some point, with the Sun forecast to increase in brightness and boil away our oceans in around a billion years’ time.
“Plans are already underway. In July this year, NASA announced the five winners of its $100,000 ‘3D-Printed Habitat Challenge’ to design a dwelling that would enable people to live and work on Mars, and which could be built using local materials and 3D-printing technology… Putting up a habitat is a good start, but looking longer-term we might want to ‘terraform’ our new home and make it more Earth-like. This wholesale makeover means fundamentally altering the atmosphere and temperature to create an environment that’s more amenable to liquid water and life.”
“The first settlers will need to draw up a legal system to maintain law and order, perhaps based on our current laws here on Earth. Jobs will need to be created and assigned to those with suitable skills, and institutions will have to be set up quickly to provide medical, educational and economic services.”
This article was the most interesting to me, because it was really specific in informing the reader of the exact plan humans will need to follow when colonizing another planet. It was amazing to see how far ahead some people had thought, as it went into detail about the societal system inhabitants will need to establish, the ways we’ll grow a sustainable food supply, the need for “space gyms” so humans can stay healthy, and even raised some tough moral questioning in terms of what it would look like to and raise a family and create a childhood on a foreign planet.
Summary: To be honest, I only picked this subject because it was a little more interesting than the rest, but once I got deeper into it, the more amazed with it I became. Like I said, it was fascinating to see how far ahead scientists had thought, and in my research I would like to touch upon what it would look like to create a society on another planet as article three did. I am still going to include the future of space travel for leisure in my inquiry, but I’m going to go more in the direction of article three for the next step in my research.
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