The future of space travel

[RusskiSoldat]

Now that Lockheed got the contract to build a new American spacecraft by 2014, Japan is looking into the possibility of a moon base, China has started launching rockets into space, Russia is on the upswing and the EU is taking space craft development more seriously, what do you think the future of space will be?

[bdh]

Now that Lockheed got the contract to build a new American spacecraft by 2014, Japan is looking into the possibility of a moon base, China has started launching rockets into space, Russia is on the upswing and the EU is taking space craft development more seriously, what do you think the future of space will be?

Well, it will be quite simple (provided I have my facts straight).
After establishing a sort of 'space harbor' on the moon, it will be used as a launchpad to get to Mars. Its relative abundance of Helium isotopes will make it ideal for long space journeys. After experimenting with Mars, Lunar bases on its Moons will be built as well as some facilities on the planet to start rudimentary terraforming. Hopefully such a process could be done relativey quickly using fusion and nuclear power to release frozen CO2, Oxygen, and water which will explode in a postive feedback loop of global warming (hopefully one which can be controlled). Meanwhile, the various gas giants will have simple facilities built around them for the purpose of refueling(since these planets also have an abundance of viable helium isotopes) and construction. With proper refueling stations in place, an incredibly large expenditure of fusion energy could allow for relatively faster space travel reducing the time it takes to travel through the solar system. After that, who knows.

[vikrant]

well as we know commertial space travel has began already but
we cant afford it {hehe}
so i would definitely love to see space travel possible for masses not some perticular bellionear

[Pnutmaster]

Whatever we manage to accomplish, it will surely dissapoint Arthur C. Clarke. We're late by 5 years at is!

[PacSubCom]

Where in the solar system is stuff that we want?

The Asteroid Belt, the Sun and maybe some moons. These are the places of future space industry. Mars is maybe used as a fuel supply on the way to the belt, but other than that it's worthless.

[Zuwxiv]

The ultimate purpose of space travel is to find other life forms. We need faster-than-light travel first.

[Richard the Lionheart]

The ultimate purpose of space travel is to find other life forms. We need faster-than-light travel first.

And expansion, for when we exhaust all the resources on our planet or just in case something catastrophic happens to it.

[Bobicus]

The ultimate purpose of space travel is to find other life forms. We need faster-than-light travel first.

Special relativity says we can't travel faster than light.

[PacSubCom]

The ultimate purpose of space travel is to find other life forms. We need faster-than-light travel first.

The ultimate purpose of space travel is to enrich ourselves. And this is precisely why it is done.

[Turkeys!]

i dont think well be able to build a ship faster then the speed of light any time soon

[carl-the-conqueror]

Special relativity says we can't travel faster than light.

so then change it

anyway at the moment (at least for another 50 years) space technology is so ineffeeicent, it wont happen with out plenty of money, money which has more urgent matters (after al flight isnt cheap, and neither is this all consuming love of crude)

[Tom Paine]

so then change it

Yeah, change the laws of physics... what, should we "move heat from a cooler to a hotter"?

Space travel has a future, but not human space travel really. Too inefficient, risky, and expensive to do any further than the moon; and what's the point of keeping going back to the moon with men now we have such excellent 'bots to use?

[Pnutmaster]

Yeah, change the laws of physics... what, should we "move heat from a cooler to a hotter"?

Space travel has a future, but not human space travel really. Too inefficient, risky, and expensive to do any further than the moon; and what's the point of keeping going back to the moon with men now we have such excellent 'bots to use?

This is quite true, as the human body can only withstand so much force before turning into a blend of meat and bones. The first pioneers to land on new planets will be bots like the Mars rovers.

[PacSubCom]

Yeah, change the laws of physics... what, should we "move heat from a cooler to a hotter"?

Space travel has a future, but not human space travel really. Too inefficient, risky, and expensive to do any further than the moon; and what's the point of keeping going back to the moon with men now we have such excellent 'bots to use?

You need the human eye and human judgement on the ground. Robots are not excellent at all for all purposes, they are dumb like a brick. Before you can develop industry, you need someone actually going there and look what it is really like. Or would you trust your television?

[krazykarl]

It really is too bad that the world cannot come together on a space program fully. It seems like such a waste of resources to have every country/bloc developing its own space program. We would make so much more progress if spacetraval and innovation was under the control of one global organization with science and exploration as its primary agenda, not the advancement of political agendas. The ISS was a good start, but that momentum needs to be carried forward and to be all inclusive. any moonbase/spaceport should be international. China should also be let onboard with the ISS, it would be a great stride for global unity to have a chinese module on the ISS. China is an emerging power in the space race, and it seems like a waste of resources to make them re-develop spaceflight tech that Russia and America have had for decades, when they could simply be contributing to the development of the moonbase or a mars mission. I truly believe that space colonization will be the catalyst for world unity, but it can only happen through cooperation and not competition.

[PacSubCom]

yeah the "blocs" are working together and have ultra-exposed multi-trillion Euro investments in space, you think twice about conflict on Earth. You are right with cooperation, the solar system can be developed much faster if everybody would pool their recources. But people are too afraid to be cut off from space if the others want it.

[Pnutmaster]

Half the problem in the U.S is that no one wants to pay more taxes to fund NASA projects that end in ruin or worse, mediocrity (in his general opinion, of course). The Space Race is over and the enthusiasm is gone. I'm depending on Europe and Asia to make advances in the field :/

[krazykarl]

Private funding for space tourisim should also provide a good boost to space traval, as we have already seen there is a large number of people willing to pay huge sums of money to go to space. I really hope the proposed spaceport in Cape breaton goes through, as this would mark Canada as an excellent place for space tourisim.

[Lee1026]

In the very short term, there won't be anything that big going on in space until the construction of a space elevator. With out that, space travel is far too expensive to ever be profitable. I don't care what you are shooting it based on, it will not make a halfway decent profit.
Is a space elevator possible? Certainly, there are no theorical problems. However, it is not a straight forward problem, as we currently lack the materials that are capable for this. Nanotubes look promising, but it will take a while before that advances far enough.

Now, let us advance our imagination to the point where we can get relatively cheap (10-50 bucks per kilo) transportation to space. What then? At that kind of price, we still won't be able to do any sort of mining profitably. However, that is where cheap energy comes in. Once we are in space, solar energy becomes a lot more profitable to use. That might bring prices down to a small fraction of what it cost today. That should bring down the cost of transportation to space to somewhere on the order of 2 to 3 buck per kilo.

Now, with this sort of prices, we can start talking about buliding things in GSO. Big space stations for tourists and scientists and the such. But travelling to outer space is still quite hard, as Newton's third law is still in effect - for anything to go forward, something have to go backwards. This means that any thing launched to do mining and the such would still have to use the sort of propellent that we are very used to. Which means that mining is still not going to be profitable.

However, with such a system, we can start buliding catapults in space. After all, we can time the launch such that the station itself is moving backwards from the target in question. Which means tha we can fire a massive object out at a massive velocity without paying anything more then the joules needed to send it out. So now we have stuff going out. Now is mining viable?

Yes and no, actually. Humans won't be able to with stand stuch a launch. But Robots can. And that is probably where this all is going.

[century x]

I want warp technology or hyper drive, to leave the solar system and start exploring the galaxy