Is human kind still reaching for outer space or have we retreated into our shell?
There is no question that we use space more these days than we ever did. Satellites which float in geosynchronous orbits are essential for telecommunications, for TV transmissions and for navigation. And there are many of them.
Just Google a list of them and you will find a long list giving their precise location and altitude above the earth"s surface. If you wish for details, you will have considerable difficulty as there are many which are undefined, some as small as baseballs.
The trouble is that the accountants have won. The penny pinchers and bean counters have put the kibosh on future space exploration because of cost. This is a most depressing turn of events because it means we are no longer, as a species, reaching for the stars.
Once we had that most beautiful of all flying machines, the Concorde. But now commercial supersonic flight is a distant memory. Why? Because the costs were large and to make it viable seemed unlikely. But nevertheless the mothballing of Concorde signaled a step backwards in the human conquest of flight and cutting edge air travel.
And so it is with space travel. The cost of raising the 2 kg into orbit is huge. Payloads are therefore clearly carefully calculated. The telecom and TV satellites, which themselves are fairly large, cost an unbelievable amount of money. But the wonderful thing is that once they are in orbit there is hardly any maintenance. The Ariadne rockets were launched from Africa because it was near the equator a really useful place to launch from. The Chinese are developing their own space launch capacity, there are going to be the few more games in town beyond just the Russians and NASA.
The space shuttle program is now coming to an end after more than three decades. They were incredible achievements while they lasted, but this July will see the last shuttle mission launch from Kennedy Space Center. So we are in fact left with a shared space station. The servicing of this is will demand space missions planned for the immediate future.
Greatness in human achievement comes from Endeavour, without counting the cost. This initial space exploration was usually expensive, but the spin-offs have been a unbelievable. Because of need to develop light and really powerful computing microchips wires developed and now they are computers just about everywhere.
Where will the next giant leap come from?
It is hard to see at this stage. America is busy fighting a war in Afghanistan and engaged on other fronts. The financial crisis that we are currently emerging from left everyone a bit smaller.
The only hope is the X prize, which is a paltry sum of money compared to the amount that is going to be spent on trying to develop a winning entry. The one model that has flown so far is a potential which has yet to be realized. Sure, the craft got into orbit and came down safely. But it has only been done once.
In conclusion, we have to hope that the human spirit finds the courage to once again strive for greatness..
There is no question that we use space more these days than we ever did. Satellites which float in geosynchronous orbits are essential for telecommunications, for TV transmissions and for navigation. And there are many of them.
Just Google a list of them and you will find a long list giving their precise location and altitude above the earth"s surface. If you wish for details, you will have considerable difficulty as there are many which are undefined, some as small as baseballs.
The trouble is that the accountants have won. The penny pinchers and bean counters have put the kibosh on future space exploration because of cost. This is a most depressing turn of events because it means we are no longer, as a species, reaching for the stars.
Once we had that most beautiful of all flying machines, the Concorde. But now commercial supersonic flight is a distant memory. Why? Because the costs were large and to make it viable seemed unlikely. But nevertheless the mothballing of Concorde signaled a step backwards in the human conquest of flight and cutting edge air travel.
And so it is with space travel. The cost of raising the 2 kg into orbit is huge. Payloads are therefore clearly carefully calculated. The telecom and TV satellites, which themselves are fairly large, cost an unbelievable amount of money. But the wonderful thing is that once they are in orbit there is hardly any maintenance. The Ariadne rockets were launched from Africa because it was near the equator a really useful place to launch from. The Chinese are developing their own space launch capacity, there are going to be the few more games in town beyond just the Russians and NASA.
The space shuttle program is now coming to an end after more than three decades. They were incredible achievements while they lasted, but this July will see the last shuttle mission launch from Kennedy Space Center. So we are in fact left with a shared space station. The servicing of this is will demand space missions planned for the immediate future.
Greatness in human achievement comes from Endeavour, without counting the cost. This initial space exploration was usually expensive, but the spin-offs have been a unbelievable. Because of need to develop light and really powerful computing microchips wires developed and now they are computers just about everywhere.
Where will the next giant leap come from?
It is hard to see at this stage. America is busy fighting a war in Afghanistan and engaged on other fronts. The financial crisis that we are currently emerging from left everyone a bit smaller.
The only hope is the X prize, which is a paltry sum of money compared to the amount that is going to be spent on trying to develop a winning entry. The one model that has flown so far is a potential which has yet to be realized. Sure, the craft got into orbit and came down safely. But it has only been done once.
In conclusion, we have to hope that the human spirit finds the courage to once again strive for greatness..
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