Man's capability to leave the Earth offers many new prospects for the future. Asteroid mining, building launch facilities on the moon, tourism, and space manufacturing are only some of the many opportunities that are being considered.
There are many considerations which must be examined . For example, in the case of manufacturing in space, economic factors include : can it be done on Earth ? If so, which offers a most cost effective venue?; environmental factors include both contamination of the plant and whatever pollutants may be generated in the manufacturing process. Let us examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of this enterprise.
Advantages
Why manufacture in space? Space offers many unique conditions which alter the properties of materials manufactured. The two major conditions are lack of gravity and lack of contamination
Microgravity
Gravity causes properties familiar to all of us. One of which is the separation of fluids according to density. With the removal of gravity, alloys and mixtures of materials with properties incompatible here on Earth can be made, resulting in alloys or mixtures which have completely different properties than those found on earth. Other processes which benefit from a lack of gravity include welding, crystal growth, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, non linear optic and photonic materials.
Contamination:
Space is a sterile environment. Sensitive production such as semi conductors and biotech would benefit from not having to use expensive equipment to filter out harmful dust which is so prevalent on the Earth.
Disadvantages
The major disadvantage to manufacturing in space is cost. Currently all space bound vehicles are government owned. Fee structures for sending materials into space are exorbitant and delivery service is both uncertain and infrequent.
It costs approximately $20,000.00 per pound to send materials into space currently. Although NASA's goal is to get the cost down to $100.00 per pound it is not likely that this will happen any time soon.
Scheduling also remains a problem. The current shuttle fleet flies about 7 missions per year compared to a goal of once per week.
Engineers made the Canadarm suitable so that it would be able to withstand the intensities of space. They used materials such as titanium, stainless steel and graphite epoxy. These materials allowed the shuttle to be durable and strong. Titanium in particular has a high strength to weight ratio [10]. This means that it is a light metal but yet very strong. Therefore, since the Canadarm was made of titanium, it allowed the export of this shuttle to space at a lower cost compared to if the shuttle was made of a heavier metal. Shipping items to space costs about $22,000 for a kilogram of material to reach the earth’s orbit [9]. Since the Canadarm weighed about 410 kilograms [3], the exporting of this shuttle would cost about $9,020,000 just for taking the shuttle to the earth’s orbit, without factoring in the cost of the material and the cost of the labour. This price is fairly low since the materials making up the Canadarm are light. The atomic mass of titanium is about 47.87 [3]. This explains why it’s fairly cheap to export a material of this element.
Space exploration has changed and developed since the first man was sent into space. Advanced rockets, new computer technology, and remote controlled robots are only a few of the things that made space travel possible. Even though this technology was efficient, it was not cheap. When a rocket was sent into space, only the capsule holding the astronauts returned to space. This expensive way of space travel was forever changed with the creation of the space shuttle. The Columbia space shuttle was important to space exploration because it used new technology that changed space travel, completed missions that other spacecraft could not, and brought new people into space.
The world we live in continues to diminish, from global warming and natural disasters to disease and poverty. Therefore, space exploration is vital in order to discover new ways to save our planet, while looking into other possibilities for our future as human beings.
These are the reasons why I believe there should be more investment in space research and technology. It would be a time consuming and financially draining quest, but the pay off in new technology, applications, resources, and expansion opportunities make it a goal to strive for. As our rate of consumption of Earth’s natural resources continues to increase, it is imperative that we invest in the research of outer space as a possible solution to sustaining the human race.
Space exploration needs advancing scientific research, more machineries and equipments which means that it would cost us a lot of
In conclusion, Continuing NASA and the programs run by it, is harmful to American society and Government. NASA harms the economy. NASA also harms the environment in which we live. And the money that NASA spends could be used to help solve problems in our country, not on another planet. Only if we work together, fixing our own problems first, respectfully with each other, as one body, one world, and one planet, then we will be able to reach out into space. We will be able to explore it safely, efficiently, and environmentally soundly.
When people think of troubles that are related to space, they tend to overlook one of the most obvious and most important problems, financing. Money may prevent humans from leaving the very earth we stand on in the first place. Money can easily be the solution to a problem or the cause of one. In the supporting film, Stationed in the Stars, it was mentioned that in 1992, NASA spent 8 billion dollars without building a single piece of material. The money was spent on other things such as payroll and international conferences. The film also brought up the fact that every pound of water needed would cost up to 10 thousand dollars; therefore, 100 lbs. of water would cost 1 million dollars. This problem was later solved with the help of Russia in the creation of the closed loop system. But Russia has not always been so helpful. While Russia was working with NASA to help build a service module, they purposely delayed their efforts in order to receive more money from NASA, until NASA had enough and gave them a deadline to comply with. There are times when financing may prevent a project from being ventured into completely without even spending the money. For example, further servicing of the International Space Station would have cost upwards of 100 billion dollars. That is why that project is still uncompleted.
Since we first sent rockets into Earths orbit, we have been pushing the technological boundaries in order to reach new heights. Space exploration has caused advances in almost every field imaginable. We have seen new technology in the fields of telecommunications, innovative new light-weight materials, rockets and aircraft material. Space exploration by nature causes innovation because the need for “increased performance in space… usually means getting more out of less” (Crusan & Neumann, 2011). These size and weight constraints on materials and equipment have lead to the creation of devices that we use everyday like water filters, scratch resistant lenses, and memory foam. The newest advancement in NASA’s long list of innovations is the International Space station (ISS). The ISS a long-term micro-gravity research station that helps us get closer to eventually making a journey to other planets. NASA has been doing the impossible for 55 years and is now in the process of handing over the reigns to the private sector. Companies like Virgin Galactic and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) have taken over wh...
Space tourists are travelers who pay for their passage into space. The trend started with entrepreneurs like Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth paying upwards of $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station. Since then, over 50 different companies world-over are actively investing and lobbying to make commercial spaceflights a regular feature of the future. Given the limited number of spacefaring nations today, these companies are largely based in USA and Russia, with other
Even if we disregard the economic value of the space program, the achievements of NASA speak for themselves. The ability to send humans onto the moon, survey the surface of Mars using the Curiosity rover, and even find water on a foreign planet is astounding. Even looking at the International Space Station, it seems abundantly clear that the space program brings more unanimity between nations than the military will ever hope to achieve, while the military has a budget 33 times that of the space program. Hence, blaming the costs of the space program is an absurd argument, as the budget that is put into the program is used very proficiently.
Most people think that the costly downside to funding space exploration is a reason to avoid spending money on sciences and instead spend it on problems here on earth, but such funding for space exploration actually promotes economical as well as scientific benefits. Space exploration is an important expenditure for the high cost because of the potential for numerous benefits such as the possibility to find useful resources to cultivate, space exploration and satellites produce many thousands of jobs in our economy, and it creates and discovers newer and better technologies through research and development.
An Astronomy topic that has always been intriguing is space travel. The ability to rocket into space, look down on Earth, and “…explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” (IMDB) is an adventure that people dream of experiencing. On July 20, 1969, an estimated six million people watched Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the Moon (Nixon Library). Presently, people are paying Virgin Galactic $250,000 to reserve a seat on a spaceship that is expected to tour suborbital space in the near future (Virgin Galactic). Although space travel continues to be of interest, there is also some controversy. Controversies include: the allocation of government resources for space exploration, government verses commercial spacecrafts, and the need to colonize other planets for the survival of humanity. The intrigue and the controversy of space travel are the reasons for this Astronomy conversation.
Space exploration is very beneficial to humankind because it creates new technologies, it brings different countries together, and gives people a better understanding of our Earth.
Why should we go into space? What is the justification for spending all the effort and money on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth?”- Stephen Hawking. Space is the everlasting, ever growing place where we happen to reside. From the beginning of intelligent life here on Earth, we have wanted to learn.
I. As highlighted by NASA’s consolidated Launch Schedule, there were 8 major construction steps (which can be...