Rockets: The Only Viable Way To Reach Outer Space?

From Robert H. Goddard’s first working prototypes to the Apollo’s Saturn V to the current SpaceX Crew Dragon, are rockets the only viable conveyance to reach outer space?

By: Ringo Bones

A few months before the Wright Brother’s first successful flight back in December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, space travel visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published his work – including the pertinent mathematics - detailing how rockets would be necessary in space exploration. Fast forward to the successful SpaceX Crew Dragon docking with the International Space Station and the Falcon 9 rocket’s lower section successfully landing for reuse to slash the cost of reaching low earth orbit, are “Goddard style rockets” currently the only viable vehicles for space exploration in the foreseeable future?

Anyone old enough to remember the early successes of the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper Experimental DC-X single stage to orbit launch system would probably think that this kind of space vehicle – as in the classic “rocketship” – is the only viable way to explore space for the foreseeable future – that is until we can create a working Alcubierre style warp drive used by Zefram Cochran in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. I mean, around the early 1990s when a suitable replacement for the NASA Space Shuttle fleet was already sought due to its cost and safety issues, it seems that the upstart DC-X single stage to orbit upstart was seen as the most promising replacement for the NASA Space Shuttle fleet – that any potential space vehicle that’s a cross between an airplane and a rocketship – i.e. a space vehicle that can reach low earth orbit but can take-off and land on a conventional 10,000-foot runaway like a passenger jet – was inevitably seen as a “technological dead end”. I mean probably anyone old enough to remember the successes of the McDonnell Douglas DCX single stage to orbit launch vehicle back in the first half of the 1990s would probably state that the design is probably what “influenced” Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon combo.

Then came 9/11 and in the intervening years on what rogue states are capable of or are willing to do. Imagine a crew of astronauts landing in hostile territory and eventually taken hostage by a terror group or a rogue state just because a ballistic computer malfunction had sent them to land in “unfriendly territory”. Such a nightmare scenario gained an air of plausibility when back in April 19, 2008 a Soyuz TMA capsule carrying South Korea’s first astronaut Yi So-yeon, Commander Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenachenko got almost 300 miles off course due to a malfunctioning ballistic computer.

Maybe NASA should work with Richard Branson in order to make a version of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo that could reach the International Space Station given that the SpaceShipOne can be controlled aerodynamically to land in a more or less conventional airport runway. I mean a design like the SpaceShipTwo is less likely to get off course and crash in a Taliban controlled territory in Afghanistan compared to the Soyuz TMA capsule returning from the International Space Station.

Can Commercial Space Tourism Fund NASA’s Return To The Moon?

Given that NASA now opens the International Space Station to tourists by 2020, is it enough to fund their manned mission to the moon by 2024?

By: Ringo Bones

Unbeknown to most people, the International Space Station does not belong to NASA, it was built with the help of Russia back in 1998 with the help of other space travel capable countries in order to participate in the mission and send up astronauts. The ISS have hosted space tourists with enough cash to spare before, like U.S. businessman Dennis Tito who back in 2001 had paid Russia around 20-million USD for the trip. Others followed his footsteps, the last being Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte back in 2009. But this time, it would be different because the proceeds will be used by NASA to fund its return to the moon and as a means for the cash-strapped government funded space agency to financially disengage itself from the orbiting research lab. Given that the International Space Station has a projected lifetime of 40 years and it is already around half that, maybe the money earned and saved by NASA could also be used to build another space station 20 years from now.

Back in Friday, June 7, 2019, NASA’s chief financial officer Jeff DeWitt announced that it will open up the ISS to business ventures including space tourism by 2020. There will be two short private astronaut missions per year, said Robyn Gatens, deputy director of the ISS. The missions will be for stays of up to 30 days. As many as a dozen private astronauts could visit the ISS per year, NASA said.

Even though the rate for staying at the International Space Station is 35.000 USD a night – there are way more expensive honeymoon suites in Dubai with a going rate of 400,000 USD a night by the way – but the round trip bill via Soyuz launch system will cost you around 58-million USD. Expensive the trip may be but the view is literally out of this world.

Space tourism will not be the only way for NASA to make fiscal sense of the rather costly endeavor of space exploration. This would include startups developing techniques for building materials in conditions of weightlessness in which experiments conducted on early NASA Space Shuttle missions have proved to be of vital importance – i.e. ultra strong and yet lightweight metal alloys and protein crystals that can only be fabricated in weightless conditions. Also fiber optic cables can be of extraordinary quality when manufactured at weightless conditions. In terms of space commercialization that makes actual fiscal sense, it seems that space based industries have the potential to earn way more money than space tourism.

Did India’s Anti-Satellite Missile Test Endanger The International Space Station?

Even though the target satellite was in an orbit lower than that of the International Space Station did last week’s Project Shakti test generated enough debris to endanger the ISS?

By: Ringo Bones

Last week’s Project Shakti anti-satellite missile test had definitely bolstered India’s space and national defense standing in the world, not to mention Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s poll numbers. But more recently, an announcement by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine claims that India’s recent anti-satellite test could endanger other satellites and objects in space – including the International Space Station.

The target of India’s Project Shakti anti-satellite missile last week was believed to be its own spy satellite Microsat-R that was launched a few months ago. The resulting kinetic impact that destroyed the spy satellite created a field of satellite debris at that orbital altitude. The debris now poses a problem because a significant number of it was kicked-up into the same orbital altitude as the International Space Station. In a worse-case scenario, some of the debris could impact the ISS creating a scenario akin to that in the movie Gravity. Some of those pieces are currently too small for NASA to reliably track, meaning we’ll have no way of predicting an impact beforehand. NASA Administrator Bridenstine announced on Monday, April 1, 2019, that “What we are tracking right now, objects big enough to track – we’re talking about 10-cm (4-inches) or bigger – about 60 pieces have been tracked”.

India deliberately targeted a satellite that had a lower orbital altitude than that of the International Space Station to prevent this very sort of situation, but a significant number of the debris appears to have been flung to a higher orbital altitude. Of those 60 debris and objects tracked by NASA, Bridenstine says 24 of them are now at the same altitude as the ISS or higher.

The nature of the region of space in low Earth orbit means that even debris residing above the ISS’ orbit could still pose a threat. Satellites and debris are gradually slowed down by the very thin atmosphere that exists there. The International Space Station, for instance, must routinely fire its booster rockets in order to maintain its orbital altitude and counter the residual atmospheric drag.

Over time, the resulting debris of the recent Indian anti-satellite test would lose altitude and eventually burn up when it hits the denser parts of the Earth’s atmosphere, but the higher altitude debris will have to come down first to within the orbital altitude of the International Space Station posing danger of an impact. The danger of debris impact could still happen months after the test. Even Mainland China’s anti-satellite missile test back in January 11, 2007 still has free-floating debris that could potentially endanger the crew of the ISS.

British Food: The Ideal Space Food?

Despite most Americans joking about Victorian Era British food as the “worst tasting gourmet food ever”, is British food the ideal provision for long-term space missions?

By: Ringo Bones

Most Americans might joke all they want behind the double-entendre of the iconic British pastry called spotted dick, but if British astronaut Major Timothy Peake gets his wishes, the “British Taste” could gain as much worldwide favor as the “British Sound” did in the global hi-fi world. UK Astronaut Timothy Peake has recently raised a competition among British middle-school students to improve his “space meals” for his deployment onto the International Space Station scheduled for 2015. In response to the challenge, the British students already had recently produced a number of potential “British space food” prototypes for Timothy Peake’s meals for the ISS next year.

According to Timothy Peake’s past experiences while training to become an astronaut in NASA, dehydrated food currently made my NASA currently consumed by astronauts working out their scientific experiments in the International Space Station are not exactly “gourmet tasting” – i.e. it tastes bland and seems to have a “life of its own” when it comes to texture. Were the provisions used on the British Antarctic Survey during the beginning of the 20^th Century tastes better than NASA’s current space food? Sadly, it is not just Major Timothy Peake that’s been complaining about NASA’s space food on the ISS.

Most astronauts that had served on the International Space Station – including the American ones – say that regular dehydrated freeze-dried food being served on the ISS isn’t as nice tasting as it should be. Given that one of the world’s greatest military geniuses, Napoleon Bonaparte, said that “an army marches on its stomach”, would there be eventually a space food revolution on the ISS? And this time, it was a Brit who fired the first shot?