What are we doing in space?

Chapter One

What do you consider the final frontier? Maybe you think of the cold wastelands of Alaska or the arid desert of the Sahara, but to some people, it’s outer space. We send spaceships to space all of the time recently and for some people, it may seem pointless. This obsession with metal tubes powered by impressive rockets seems to be accompanied by our natural curiosity as a human race. 

We humans have always had the drive to discover something new to change the future and space travel has been a major factor in advances in science. But where did this absurd idea of space travel originate? Well, it all started with one man named Robert Hutchings Goddard. Robert Goddard was a well-known, American physicist and is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion today. He first started his work in rocket propulsion around 1910 where he tested a powder-fueled rocket in the basement of the WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) physics building that ended in a messy explosion. Instead of expelling him, the school administrators took an interest in Goddard’s work and encouraged him to continue his studies. This was the beginning of his tests of rocket propulsion and physics. Robert Goddard continued his extensive research and testing for years to come, experimenting with solid and liquid-fueled rockets and the physics of sending something that high in the sky. Along with Robert’s experiments, he also wrote many papers describing what he learned and things that could be improved on about his designs. These papers and others written by him were published by the Smithsonian which also helped fund most of his research, donating over $10,000 to his efforts by 1927. Robert also greatly contributed to World War II where the Navy enlisted him to assist in “the development of practical jet-assisted takeoff and liquid propellant rocket motors capable of variable thrust,” which means incorporating the rockets we use on spaceships onto fighter jets to help them take off from an aircraft carrier faster and more efficiently. His studies with the Navy were very successful which gave him more attention for funding his research. Robert Goddard did amazing things in his 62 years of living including anticipating the German V-2 missiles, using vanes to steer a rocket, developing gyro control over a rocket, receiving a patent for a multi-stage rocket, among other things. Robert Hutchings Goddard pioneered the way for rockets and spaceships. He discovered the basic principles of launching and controlling a liquid-fueled rocket which was a great achievement at the time. We would never be at the stage of space travel we are at now without the extensive research and experimentation of Dr. Robert H. Goddard.

Dr. Robert Goddard was the first person to think about traveling beyond the atmosphere and put his ideas into action, but what was the point of his experiments, and before we answer that, what is this dark abyss above us that we call space? Space has many different definitions in various contexts. In the context of this writing, we are talking about the space that is past Earth’s atmosphere. Every known planet in our solar system has an atmosphere whether it’s thin and delicate like Mercurys or big and dense like Jupiters. A planet’s atmosphere is the border between zero gravity and the gravity of the planet. Atmospheres hold in gasses, for example, the earth has a mix of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and others. The rockets we launch today are advanced enough and powerful enough to catapult past our atmosphere and into space. The hardest part of a spaceship launch is getting out of our atmosphere because you have to fight gravity and gather enough speed to break through it. However, once you get into space there is no gravity so a spaceship can use minimal power to adjust its flight. Space holds all of the stars, planets, asteroids, meteors, spaceships, and space debris we can think of. It can be compared to a variety of pool toys (planets, stars, and others) sitting in our vast ocean. As far as we know space is endless and can hold an infinite amount of mass. We have always studied space because of our natural curiosity as humans and the advancements of spaceships have greatly accelerated our research.

Since the first thought was formed of sending something to the unknown world above, humans have gotten smarter and more efficient at creating and launching rockets. It is amazing to see how far we have come in terms of space exploration and the vehicles we have used to get there. From small rockets that would travel only 41 feet into the air before landing roughly, to a 357-foot space station that has orbited (flying in a circle around the earth) over 300 miles away for 20 years. But of course, we wouldn’t have ever launched this marvelous machine without lots of failures. We’ve already talked about Robert Goddard and his achievements so let’s skip ahead to the very first successful launch of a spaceship. In 1946 the USA launched the rocket ship WAC corporal. It was the first rocket in the world to reach the edge of space and come down in one piece. This engineering masterpiece showed that sending rocket ships into space was entirely possible with enough research and development. The USA sent one more space ship into the sky taking the first pictures of the earth at an altitude of 65 miles before the USSR took over. Between 1951 and 1957 Russia launched 4 space ships and all of them accomplished something great. From sending dogs into orbit to the production of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and the first artificial satellite sent into space the USSR went uncontested launching space ship after space ship into the world above. You can notice the big leap in technology from Goddards 41 foot launch to almost consistent orbital launches. At this point, the USSR and the USA had started a race to space, initiated after Russia launched Sputnick 1 and Sputnick 2 within a month of each other. These successful launches started what we call the Space Race. Russia didn’t have space all to itself though because in 1959 America launched the Explorer 6 which took the first pictures of Earth from orbit. The USSR and America went back and forth launching rockets that each did amazing things for the advancement of space travel. The USSR sent the first man to space in 1961 while NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) made the first orbital solar observatory the next year. Russia answered back with the first woman in space and the first artificial satellite around the moon in 1963 and ‘66, but America ended the space race with the first human to walk on the moon after they completed the first piloted orbital mission of the moon in ‘68 and ‘69. The first moon landing was as Neil Armstrong (the first man to walk on the moon) said, “One giant leap for mankind.” and it was. In just 50 years since rockets were first conceptualized we had not only sent multiple people to space but landed someone on the moon. This great feat did not halt our will to launch more and more technologically advanced rockets into space though as the USSR achieved the first automatic sample return from the moon and then the first space station successfully launched again within a short year of each other. America took the first pictures of Venus from space in 1974 and the USSR took the first sound recordings and soil samples of the same planet in ‘82. Bruce McCandless II took the first untethered spacewalk in 1984 while NASA took the first picture of the entire solar system a long 6 years later. The stamina that our space ships can produce and maintain was shown clearly in 1995 when Valeri Polyakov spent 437 consecutive earth days in a spaceship. Humans continued to break records and advance our space flight technology with some notable accomplishments. NASA orbited the asteroid Eros and then landed on it in 2000 and 2001. The ESA (European Space Agency), ISA (Italian Space Agency), and NASA collaborated to send Cassini Huygens into orbit around Saturn in 2005 which later landed on the planets’ moon, Titan. The USA was the only one in space from ‘06 to ‘12 with missions that took a sample of a comet, sent a space telescope to look for earth-like exoplanets, orbited Mercury, and sent a probe into interstellar space. In 2015, Japan and America grew and ate lettuce, the first food eaten and grown in space. If you look at all of the things we have accomplished with spaceships you wouldn’t know what half of them even meant but just know that each one was very important in some way to the advancement of science. Looking at the timeline of space travel and accomplishments you can see how these more difficult missions that might not be possible 50 years ago now seem to be completed almost effortlessly. This shows how fast we have advanced our rocketships to adjust for our need for knowledge of space.

 As humans have advanced as a species, so has our desire to explore the unknown. As of March 2021, we have launched hundreds of manned and unmanned rockets into space with an amazing 94% success rate. These vessels have carried out a wide variety of missions from NASA’s Mars rovers taking soil samples to learn about the red planet, the ISS (International Space Station) conducting experiments on the effects of long term space exposure on the human body while staying in orbit around the earth, and the Apollo missions landing people on the moon and establishing the technology to meet other interest nations had in space. We have accomplished great things with spacecraft with many more opportunities ahead.

Chapter Two

From the early nineteen hundreds to 2021, humans have sent hundreds of different sizes, shapes, and colors of spaceships to space. But if you look at the space vessels we work with today you can see the obvious advancements we have made through space travel. Not only do they look more pleasing to the eye, but they also function way better than older versions. The first rockets can be described as a metal tube with a pointed cylinder on top and varying amounts of fins on the bottom. These early designs were very simplistic because they didn’t have any specific mission to accomplish other than gaining as much altitude as possible. The design was fairly aerodynamic because of its narrow posture and the fins at the bottom were meant to stabilize the rocket as it traveled up into the sky. Rockets were only 7-10 feet tall at the time which is drastically different from our hundreds of feet tall rockets we are used to seeing today. Different rockets are designed in different ways to accommodate whatever payload they might need to carry. For example, most rockets sent into space carry some kind of probe or rover that will orbit a planet or land to take samples and discover the terrain. Both of these devices need a bigger exoskeleton with booster rockets to keep the equipment safe during the exiting of the atmosphere and propel it to its destination. This outer shell is what is we see as the spaceship takes off. It holds the vehicle inside and when it gets past Earth’s atmosphere the probe or rover will be extricated from the shell and perform its desired task. Building a shuttle that will carry expensive and fragile equipment is not an easy task. There are many factors like weight, drag, space, function, heat shielding, and strength that need to be addressed when building a rocketship. If any of these parts fail it would mean disaster for the equipment and the mission but luckily the people that build these amazing machines have a wide variety of expertise and know-how to construct a safe, strong exoskeleton. One of the hardest parts of designing a rocketship is balancing the space you need to store a probe or rover safely but also making the ship slim and aerodynamic enough to reach space. This is where almost all spaceships are similar because on the top they all start with a long, skinny rod or pointed tip of a cone that will eventually widen into the mainframe of the ship. This widening shape allows air to flow around the ship more effectively than an abrupt, flat surface that will ram into the air. The way air flows around a spaceship is important because an efficient spaceship will need less energy from rocket boosters that reduce emissions, saves weight, and cuts costs. The cone eventually widens into an even cylinder that will be the shape of the rest of the ship. This part of the spaceship is what holds the equipment that will perform a mission in space. This pointed cone design has been used since Robert Goddard’s first rendition of the rocketship and has proven to be very efficient. The second main component of a spaceship is the rocket boosters. They may be located under or to the side of the mainframe depending on the requirements of the ship. Rocket boosters are what propels the whole spaceship past the atmosphere which because of gravity, requires an immense amount of thrust. After the spaceship has reached the zero gravity of space, the rockets will detach from the ship and fall back to earth because their job is done. In the past, the rockets would hurtle towards earth, breaking apart in the process and never be picked up. However, in recent years astrophysicists have been able to detach the rockets and slowly bring them back down to earth by spare fuel and boosters they have. This reduces the amount of waste rocket launches cause and the landed boosters can be recycled or reused which is good for the environment. Rocket boosters need to be very powerful to propel a rocket over 50 miles into the sky, that is why they seem just as big as the main structure. One standard rocket can produce over 20 million horsepower and 2.5 million pounds of thrust. Most spaceships have two or more rockets depending on how heavy their payload is and of course, they are the make or break point of a mission. If a rocket fails or malfunctions the spaceship could explode or be stranded halfway into the atmosphere, left to fall uncontrollably back down to earth. The only major changes to these spacecraft over the years are the size of the vessels and the space needed in between the rockets and the top to hold a smaller probe or rover. Spaceships today are much more advanced than they used to be although they still carry over the same principal designs. 

Although it is very obvious to see the changes of appearance that rocket ships have taken it is not so obvious to notice the technological advancements made to these spacecraft. Before we look at how the mechanics of a rocket ship have changed over the years, let’s review how today’s rockets function. Space agencies create different types of spacecraft for different purposes so some things might not be consistent throughout all of the spaceships. The one consistent thing among the agencies is the rocket boosters that propels these giant metal tubes into space. I won’t get too much into detail about how rocket engines work but luckily they can be summarized very easily. One thing that you can notice from watching a spaceship launch is the giant flames coming from the end of the rocket boosters. This is what produces the thrust that the ship needs to accelerate but it’s not as simple as it looks. Inside the rocket booster, there is a chain reaction that occurs to create this flame. It starts with either liquid or solid fuel combining with oxygen through something called an oxidizer. This mixture generates a controlled explosion that takes place in a combustion chamber which helps contain the blast so it doesn’t damage any components of the rocket. The exhaust produced by the combustion is fed through a nozzle that will concentrate the force of the explosion to produce the massive amount of thrust needed to drive a spaceship past the atmosphere. This exhaust is the flame you see. There are many other, more complex, smaller chemical reactions that happen between the oxidation of the fuel to the output of the exhaust but we won’t get into that in this paper. Rocket boosters can use either solid or liquid fuel to make the thrust-producing flame. Depending on the fuel it could be more or less efficient and more or less dense. This decision is up to the constructors of the rocket. Rocket engines have always been based on the same systems and the only thing that has changed is the size, the fuel used, and the chemicals used to combine with the oxidizer. These changes are mostly minor to the original design of the rocket booster but they do end up making it more efficient. 

Now that we know how rocket engines work, let’s look at some of the equipment we send into space; we’ll start with rovers. Rovers are autonomous vehicles that we land on planet surfaces to explore and collect samples to learn more about said planet. Rovers are transported in spaceships and start their mission as soon as they land on the ground, driving around a planet and sending pictures to its space agency. These space vehicles operate on battery power that is charged by solar panels mounted on their back meaning most rovers today can last up to 10-15 earth years on another planet. They have mounted cameras that take pictures of the surface and send them back to earth. They also take samples of the ground by drilling a hole and placing the sediment into a tube which will be picked up and carried back to earth in a later mission. Rovers are very big making it so they must be folded up while traveling to their destination so while in the spaceship, all six wheels of the rover will be folded into its body only unfolding in the landing process. Rovers are very useful for discovering a planet’s terrain but what can we use to explore a planet at a faster pace? This is where space probes come in. A space probe is autonomous like the rover but instead of landing on a planet and driving around, a space probe will orbit a planet, take pictures of its landscape and send it back to its space agency. Space probes can still land on a planet’s surface but they don’t have wheels to move around. Rovers and probes are similar in the sense that they both need a larger spaceship to carry them past the atmosphere. The probe however will detach from the whole spaceship to use its boosters to navigate towards its planet. Space probes carry mostly satellites and cameras along with other electronics like solar panels that help them in their mission. They can be very useful as they photograph the surface of a planet to look at its environment, terrain, and weather so that astrophysicists can better prepare for a rover landing on a given planet. Moving back over to the topic of spaceships, we will look at some of the expensive and complicated electronics they carry. Almost all spaceships launch and maintain orbit autonomously because even if a human were inside of it, they would be much less accurate and more likely to make a mistake, sending the spacecraft to its doom. This means that spaceships carry hundreds of pounds of electronics that are heavily programmed and designed to assist the spaceship in all of its required maneuvers. Depending on if astronauts will stay in this spaceship, the vessel may have amenities like lights, food storage, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a control center. All of these will help an astronaut be more comfortable and allow him/her to stay in space for longer. We have gone through all of the basic things that spaceships do along with the things they transport and what they do, but how do these modern designs compare to the original versions of rocketships? Well, it is very obvious and plain to see the differences between these spaceships. Older rocketships were only a rocket booster; they did not carry anything other than fuel. They also were a lot less fuel-efficient and severely underpowered meaning they didn’t produce enough thrust to get past the atmosphere, let alone into orbit. Compare that to today’s towering spaceships that carry heavy machinery past the atmosphere to discover more about the galaxy we live in. So now you can see how far we have come in making spaceships and how advanced they are including the use and operation of space probes and rovers. Spaceships perform various, difficult tasks in space that no single human ever could and they will forever be a pinnacle learning point for scientists.

Rocket ships have become extremely advanced from the birth of the idea to today and the best way to notice this difference is to look at the difficulty of missions they carry out while staying mostly autonomous and even reusable. The main space agency we will look at is SpaceX which is an American agency founded in 2002 by Elon Musk. This agency is a great example of how spaceships have advanced and a look at the recent missions to space made throughout the whole world. We will be looking at other space agencies as well but SpaceX has, butst notable advancements in the space industry as of recent. As with any good book, we’ll start at the beginning. In 2002, SpaceX was founded by today’s richest man: Elon Musk, who along with being worth 155 billion dollars, is very smart and knowledgeable in terms of spaceflight. Anyway enough fueling this man’s ego, let’s talk about what SpaceX has been doing lately. From 2002 to 2005 SpaceX only focused on finding funding and generating ideas and designs for spacecraft, so it wasn’t until late 2005 that the agency first started testing its ideas. They began testing a rocket that they called the Falcon 1 which unlike most spaceships launched at that time was only a rocket containing fuel and other smaller, necessary electrical components. The Falcon 1 was not like other rockets however because it was designed to be reused. Now, this is a completely new concept in the space industry because most of the time when a rocket booster has completed its job of sending a spaceship past the atmosphere, it will disconnect and fall back to earth, breaking up on its way back down. Some bigger parts of the rocket that might have survived the fall will be picked up and disposed of but most of the rocket will be burned up miles before it hits the ground. Making a reusable rocket means that when the rocket disconnects it will use extra fuel to rotate properly and slow down its fall to land safely. A reusable rocket is much better than a non-reusable rocket because it can save costs from having to build new rockets every time and in terms of space flight, the cost is very important. On average, NASA will spend 22 billion dollars in one year with a majority of that money being spent on building and launching spaceships. The cost to launch one spaceship into space is in the hundred millions and the cost to build one is in the billions so you can see why having a reusable rocket would way more cost-efficient as well as healthier for the environment. Falcon 1 was launched a total of five times and succeeded in its mission in the last two attempts. Despite the success rate, the Falcon 1 was truly an innovative design that would change space travel forever. In 2006 SpaceX received funding to start developing another reusable rocket that they called Flacon 9. This rocket was essentially the same as its predecessor except for the fact that it was 60% heavier with 60% more thrust as well as the newest programming and technologies developed by the company. Falcon 9 had a much longer legacy, however, because from 2010 to 2021 it has successfully completed 113 out of 115 total launches with one partial failure and one instance of a total loss of the rocket. Remember, the Falcon 9 is only a rocket meant to carry the actual spaceship into space, it is not the spaceship. In 2010 SpaceX made an amazing achievement with their Dragon spacecraft when it landed safely and autonomously after orbiting the earth. Recovering a spacecraft after it has exited the atmosphere is an extreme feat for multiple reasons. The first reason is the excessive heat a spaceship will experience on re-entering the atmosphere. Once an object is past our atmosphere, it experiences no gravity so it will move in a direction that the rocket boosters have pushed it infinitely with no friction slowing it down, but once a spacecraft enters the atmosphere again it will experience the gravity of earth which will drag the craft down at an intense speed and with that speed comes friction and friction creates heat. Any given spaceship will experience heat at over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit or about 1650 degrees Celcius which when compared to the melting point of the metal that is used on most spacecraft (aluminum) has a melting point of only 1221 degrees Fahrenheit, so how can a spaceship withstand that heat? Well, it’s easier than it seems. Spaceships don’t fall straight down, they must re-enter the atmosphere of the earth at a shallow angle so that they don’t experience the most friction possible and therefore extreme heat. This can be compared to how an airplane flies. The aircraft should fly across the sky rather than straight down so it doesn’t experience that immense amount of friction and heat. Flying towards earth at a shallow angle will help the spaceship not break up but they will still experience immense amounts of heat, so how do they stop from burning up? Astrophysicists came up with the idea of heat shields as a protective surface meant to be destroyed on re-entry to save the rest of the spacecraft. They are made out of a heavy plastic resin that when burned creates a chemical reaction that pushes the hot gas away from the spacecraft. This method was used for a very long time until the idea of reusable rockets came around when scientists wanted to find a different material to use that wouldn’t burn up and have to be replaced after every landing. They finally came up with a solution: ceramic tiles. When tested, the ceramic tiles would reflect heat out instead of burning up, and with insulation between each layer, they worked perfectly. So with the perfect angle and thick ceramic heat shields, spaceships can make a safe landing on earth, but there is another factor besides heat: velocity. Velocity is the speed of an object and you can easily guess given the average size of a spaceship that they would be moving extremely fast, 17,500 miles per hour or 28,163 kilometers per hour fast to be exact. When entering the earth’s atmosphere, spaceships will freefall for a long time before they take any actions to slow down. At some point in the freefall, the rocket boosters will be activated and start forcing their thrust against the oncoming ground which will slow the spacecraft down. The spacecraft might also deploy a heavy kevlar parachute. The boosters will stay on for the continuation of the flight at a certain, varying speed to land perfectly. These maneuvers are preprogrammed into the spacecraft and must be performed perfectly to land the spaceship without any harm. Luckily, SpaceX has this science down to a tee which is reflected in their 98% success rate in launching their Falcon 9 class rockets. It has taken many years to develop a consistent reusable rocket but SpaceX hasn’t stopped there. In 2012 SpaceX was the first commercial company to successfully dock a spaceship with the ISS and in 2017 they achieved their biggest goal: to successfully launch a reused orbital class rocket. SpaceX doesn’t exclusively work on reusable rockets as shown in 2020 when they sent their first crewed spaceship past the atmosphere. This American space agency is truly innovative when it comes to space travel and they don’t plan to stop their genius flow of ideas anytime soon. 

That’s a quick look at some recent missions and what is currently happening in the spaceflight community. In this chapter we’ve gone over how rockets and spaceships work, how they re-enter the atmosphere, and how reusable space flight is useful and attainable. Learning about how rockets work and the effort people put into making them work is an important part of understanding why we are even in space in the first place. 

Chapter Three

Rocketships look fascinating as they stand high above their surrounding area, sitting on a launchpad with gleaming white, heat-shielding blankets, and the company logo displayed gracefully along its hull. We always see these giant machines in the news whether they fail or succeed in their launch, but what are they doing in space and why is it so important that we continue to send rocket-powered computers into, and then out of, the atmosphere? We have looked at what probes and rovers do in space but other types of spaceships fulfill missions just as important as probes and rovers. One of the main spacecraft we’ll be looking at in this section is the ISS or International Space Station and yes, it’s as cool as it sounds. The ISS was launched by NASA in 1998 and has been orbiting earth ever since. It was a project that was made possible by five space agencies representing 15 countries and took 10 years to complete. The ISS is extremely advanced and able to support human life with a planned orbit expectancy of over 30 years. It stands tall with dimensions of 355 by 240 feet or 108 by 72 meters and provides over 43,000 cubic feet to store electronics, supplies, and human necessities. Spacecraft have proven to be very adaptable to given circumstances and the ISS is a perfect example of this. When it first launched, the space station was one straight tube with only a couple of solar panels extending from its side, but today it has more than doubled in size with a cross-section to accommodate more modules and 16 solar panel wings. This is the result of other rocketships that traveled to attach and add new components and technologies for the greater good that is the space station accessible across the world. Up in space, orbiting around the earth, the ISS has a long list of tasks it is constantly completing most of which include research that can’t be done on earth. As a whole, the space station takes pictures of the earth as it orbits to help with weather predictions, storm warnings, and major events that could be seen from space like excessive smoke from a wildfire. On the research side of things, the crew that has been present on the ISS since its launch can study space easier which directly benefits us on earth. The crew onboard are also studying the effects of microgravity on the human body which when simplified is the question, “what happens to our bodies when we stay on zero gravity for a long time?” All these and more make the ISS an essential part of our life, research, and science on earth. Other space probes and orbiters observe planets, comets, stars, and black holes. We can learn many things from observing the various rocks and stars floating around in our galaxy. 

Now we know what they do in space but what can we learn from a seemingly endless black abyss filled with various-sized rocks? Space can answer an infinite amount of questions that scientists have, from “Is there life beyond earth?” to “Is there?”. The answers to these questions are held in space. In this section, we’ll go over objects found in space and what we can learn from them starting with asteroids. Asteroids are large rocks that are actually considered minor planets in some cases and commonly orbit the sun. They range in size from just 33 feet in diameter to over 300 miles. Asteroids are only considered asteroids when they are in orbit. If they enter a planet’s atmosphere they become a meteor which happens very often at a suggested average of 17 meteors big enough to hit earth each day. The reason that this is not a big deal for us is that most of the time they land in places that don’t affect us or go unnoticed like the ocean that takes up 71% of the earth’s surface meaning that every meteor has a 29% chance of hitting the earth. Another reason we don’t notice or care about meteors is that most of them burn up before they can even touch the ground. We’ve already talked about how heat shields work on spaceships but meteors don’t come with heat shields so most of the time the intense heat will break the rock apart before it can touch the surface of our planet. You might be thinking “If asteroids are just rocks floating through space, why are they so important for us to learn about?” Well approximately 4.5 billion years ago a solar nebula (a cloud of gas and dust) imploded and created the sun and planets. The asteroids we observe today have to contain some pieces of what that nebula was and that is why scientists or more specifically astronomers want to study asteroids. Asteroids commonly contain metals like nickel and iron but can also hold more rare types such as gold, platinum, iridium, and others at a higher concentration than earth. These metals can be useful for the economy and production of technologies on earth as well as holding clues as to how the universe was made. Learning from asteroids is very important for the safety of our planet because it can allow us to learn about past impacts on earth and mitigate future ones to keep us and our equipment safe. These space rocks can also be used for long-distance space travel training helping astronauts and spaceships prepare and learn what works for reaching a faraway planet. One of the last ways that we can use asteroids is to collect the resources that they provide like precious metals to achieve more affordable space flight. All these reasons and more are what make a seemingly useless rock hurtling around space a literal gold mine for space exploration. Another object that can provide us with knowledge and experience is exploring translunar space. Unlike asteroids, translunar space is a domain rather than an object. It is the area around and beyond the earth and the moon’s orbit paths and extends to the edges of the fields of gravity provided by the earth and its moon. Translunar space holds many resources to research things such as galactic cosmic radiation which is the most dangerous element to space travelers as well as the experience gained from making trips to deep space which requires lots of resources. We’ll start by dissecting galactic cosmic radiation or GCR. Radiation is easily defined as the process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves. We see this name a lot concerning nuclear radiation but many people don’t realize that radiation isn’t always bad. However, in this context, it is. GCR occurs when the atoms in space have their electrons stripped away as they travel near the speed of light. This amount of speed is unnatural and scientists hypothesize that this is caused by the magnetic fields from supernova remnants. The speed of these particles is dangerous to humans because they pass through our bodies extremely fast and strip away electrons causing the atoms that make us a solid figure to be more positively charged and negatively affect our health. By learning about GCR we can mitigate its effects on humans as well as advance medical science on earth. So while it can be extremely harmful, galactic cosmic radiation can also give us the resources for serious medical advancements at the molecular level. The other part of traveling to translunar space is the experience it gives astronauts and the information that aerospace engineers get about their vessels and how they perform when they travel this far from earth. Astronauts can practice living in a spaceship with limited resources and advanced electronics to maintain. Translunar space is a perfect practice ground for astronauts to get used to living in zero gravity as well as performing research that otherwise wouldn’t be completed on Earth. People can also monitor the health and function of a spacecraft while it is in translunar space which can help them spot weaknesses to improve on later. We can look at how an instrument functions in space and if it is even effective in this strange world above us. The final place in outer space that can be explored and learned from mars. Mars is the next planet from the sun after Earth and is considered the most like our planet because of the evidence of water found in September of 2020 however it remains unknown if there is life on this planet. Since Mars is further from the sun than Earth it is colder with an average temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit or -62 degrees Celsius so if there was any water on mars it would be in the form of ice. You might be wondering why it is so important to find water on another planet, well the answer to that question is held in another question. Scientists’ biggest question concerning space has almost always been if there are any lifeforms on other planets and the presence of water would give reason to believe that extraterrestrial lifeforms have been sustained on a planet other than Earth, in this case, Mars. Not only is learning about new types of organisms exciting to a scientist but the idea that humans could colonize another plant is equally if not more appealing. That’s right, I just said that humans could live on Mars permanently soon because of the planet’s similar characteristics to Earth. Mars provides a mostly safe area for us to explore and learn from it as well as test commercial rocketships that could carry people to the red planet for colonization. You might also be wondering “why would we want to leave earth” well this is when we leave the realm of science and enter the realm of opinion. Some people don’t see the reason to leave this earth we live on because they are content with their environment but for other people, it is a different story. Some believe that it’s too risky to send people to space which is a reasonable opinion because space travel could be detrimental to the human body as well as deadly in certain situations. No matter the reason it seems that big companies like SpaceX continue to test and develop commercial spacecraft with the end goal of colonizing Mars. The other factor of exploring and living on Mars long term is the struggles of having to work with other nations peacefully to achieve a greater goal. This is especially important in developing commercial spacecraft and building resources on Mars because if we have a conflict 175 million miles away we could end up destroying the planet and ruining future expeditions. Other space agencies’ cooperation is also needed in creating the spaceships because some countries might have access to different resources than others making it easier to build a spaceship capable of reaching the red planet. Luckily, multiple nations have already shown cooperation and determination to work together successfully in the form of the ISS, this shows that all of the big space agencies on Earth could work together to approach Mars. In this section, we have gone over what spacecraft do in space as well as why they are important. We have looked at the benefits of exploring three parts of outer space: Translunar space, asteroids, and Mars. While space may seem millions of miles away, it is infinitely reachable given enough determination, drive, and equipment. 

 As you can see, we can learn many previously unknown things about space, other planets, and even the world we live in. This could help us greatly advance science to possibly solve some issues we might have on earth like global warming. In previous chapters, we have gone over what spaceflight is and how it is achieved but in this chapter, we have gone over the burning question of this essay: what is the purpose of space travel? As you can see, we can learn from other planets and how their ecosystems work to sustain themselves to help us with research and medicine on Earth from the launching of metal and wires into space. 

Chapter Four

We have come very far in terms of space travel from when the first rocket was imagined to the fully autonomous, self-landing rocketships we have today. We have talked about reusable rockets and how good they are for the environment but they are still as expensive as, if not more than normal rockets built today. These problems and more can still be improved in space travel today. 

Starting with the financial struggles of space travel we’ll go over what space agencies can do to reduce the overall costs of their operations opening with the changes of material they can use. As we’ve already talked about, it takes millions of dollars to design, launch and utilize a spacecraft and while the people that help build it do have big payrolls, most of the money is in the material they use to build the spaceship which is mostly aluminum. Now aluminum isn’t very expensive but spaceships are giant vessels and as you can imagine, need thousands of square feet of the metal meaning they spend thousands on just the aluminum. Spaceships also include miles of wire, hundreds of pounds of insulation, and an extreme amount of either solid or liquid fuel, all of these and more add up to the insane amount of money that you see space agencies spending on their rocketships. Along with the number of materials in a spacecraft, there is also the cost and rarity of material to consider. The main reason that spaceships are so expensive to build is not only the sheer size of them but also the scarcity of the materials used. Some of these rare materials are titanium alloy, gold, and tungsten. These metals are all crucial to the correct function of the spacecraft but are expensive to use as well as being finite amongst the earth. There is no clear solution yet to decrease the cost of spacecraft or a way to replace these precious metals, however, one option is to create a different part of the spacecraft that might be better than the previous version and not require these rare materials. This would reduce the cost and assure the continuation of the metals staying on the earth but it would take a lot of work to improve a part of a spacecraft to not only make it more efficient but also make it cheaper. So while aerospace engineers continue to work on a solution to reducing the cost of spaceships, big space agencies continue to spend billions of dollars each year on their explorative expeditions. Another element that can be improved upon in space travel is the impact that they have on the environment. During every launch, spaceships pump an immense amount of greenhouse gasses into the air from the burning of their rocket fuel. If you have ever watched a rocket launch whether it’s online or in-person it’s hard to miss the giant cloud of smoke coming from the end of its boosters. This cloud is the main cause of the rocket’s carbon footprint as it contains harmful gases and pounds of soot. Most rockets, however, are propelled by liquid hydrogen which produces water vapor instead of the harmful gasses but just producing hydrogen impacts the environment in almost the same way as the dirty exhaust rockets. As spaceships climb higher into the sky they continue to produce greenhouse gases that contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect. Nonetheless, rocket launches are few and far between which makes airplanes the number one contributor to global warming by emissions each year.  When older rockets were launched into space, there was no way to bring them back to Earth so these unmanned spacecraft would eventually run out of power and become space junk orbiting the earth. This not only pollutes space but also poses a threat to working spacecraft as they have a chance of colliding. In the podcast Science vs, they have an episode where they talk to Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year in space from 2015 to 2016. In this interview, Scott tells a story about an old Russian satellite, turned space junk that was on a collision course with the ISS. He was informed of this situation by NASA but then had a scheduled interview to attend with a news station during this crisis. After the interview, Scott and other astronauts aboard the space station waited for the end, but it never came. The satellite got within a mile of the ISS but just barely missed it. Had it hit the space station, Scott would have been instantly vaporized because of the opposing speeds of the vessels. The full story1 will be cited in the footnotes below and I recommend you check out the podcast Science Vs by gimlet media. While it was an extremely close call, Scott Kelly made it safely back to Earth on March second, 2016. As you can see, space junk can be extremely dangerous to current missions in space. As aerospace engineers and environmentalists continue to work on these problems, space exploration continues to advance at a staggering pace. Space travel is nowhere near perfect but given enough time and brainpower we could solve all of these problems and explore further into space.

With all of these things that could be changed concerning space travel, some things can be fixed very shortly. In the recent years of space travel, we have launched more advanced rockets at a faster pace than ever before with no sign of stopping. Big space agencies like SpaceX and NASA are working on reusable rockets which is a huge leap forward. In this section, we will look at some upcoming advancements and missions in space as well as what that means for us as humans. As you already know, space agencies are working on bringing humans to Mars which will be an amazing accomplishment. The day I’m writing this marks the five-day countdown to SpaceX’s crewed launch to the ISS which is on April 22nd, 2021. In this mission, Falcon 9 rockets will carry four astronauts to the ISS in a six-month process. NASA also has a very busy 2021 agenda as they plan to send rockets to the moon, specific asteroids, and most excitedly, launching a test flight called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. This vessel is programmed to crash into the asteroid Didymos which doesn’t pose a threat to Earth but is a safe testing environment to see if a rocket launched into an asteroid could change its trajectory, potentially throwing it off of a collision course towards Earth. NASA also plans to test two different planes down on Earth along with their hectic space calendar. As SpaceX continues to work towards reusable space flight and NASA works towards crewed space flights, the future is invigorated by these amazing space agencies. Space exploration continues to advance at a prodigious rate promising many new upgrades and with these, incredible possibilities. 

Most humans hate having to fly in an aircraft to go from one place to another whether it be from the claustrophobia of sitting in a metal tube zooming across the Earth or the fear whenever the plane encounters turbulence, but now with the production and importance of spaceships becoming ever prominent in today’s society, humans have another, bigger metal tube to be scared of. However, there is no need to be scared as spaceships have an amazing success rate along with being important for scientists. They discover new worlds, inspect foreign surfaces, send humans into space, and much more. Spaceships continue to provide a doorway to outer space to help scientists uncover the world’s biggest questions.

[1]Transcript: Scott Kelly: A year in space by Science Vs. Timestamp 15:25