The Final Frontier
The Final Frontier
When the International Space Station or ISS was completed the Space Shuttle fleet was retired in July of 2011. It was a bittersweet moment for NASA and the space exploration community. On one hand the United States retired the space shuttle with no replacement ready to fly, however the ISS after almost twenty years of construction was finally finished. The retirement of the shuttle marked the end of an era, but its also had many people asking whats next for NASA? We built the station how are we going to get to it? Is Mars Next?
Whats Next?
Contrary to what people might think, NASA has quite a bit on its plate right now. NASA is known for exploration, science, and technology. They’ve never been know to have a great marketing team. So needless to say they have not been doing a great job at spreading the word about what their plans are for the future. They really should though, because its tremendously exciting. NASA for the most part has spent quite a lot of money and resources exploring low earth orbit. Yes we have gone as far as the moon. However NASA’s focus, at least from a “manned” missions perspective has rarely exceed low earth orbit or LEO. So the trailblazing is done. NASA has spent over 60 years doing research in the space around the earth and has begun fostering private companies to take over LEO. In December of 2014 NASA started CSCC, the Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities. Essentially giving contracts to commercial companies to begin launching rockets into space on their own with guidance from NASA. Companies that have currently been awarded contracts are SpaceX, Orbital ATK, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, Final Frontier Design, and many more. These companies contracts and responsibilities vary, for example SpaceX and Orbital ATK, were awarded Commercial Resupply Contracts (CRS) for the International Space Station. They are responsible for supplying the ISS with food, water, life support, science experiments, and what ever needs to be transported to and from the ISS when needed. It was also recently announced that NASA as soon as next year will be using SpaceX and Boeing capsules to get too and from the ISS. This will the be first time in almost a decade that the United States will have manned spacecraft launching from Florida again. Also the first American made space craft to dock with the ISS since the Space Shuttle.
The International Space Station
The ISS is a space station the size of a football (American) field, orbiting the earth two hundred and fifty miles high, traveling at 17,200 mph. Its an extraordinary achievement for the human race. It was built in conjunction with seventeen different countries with The United States, Russia, Japan, and Canada handling most of the cost and development. The United States and Russia were primarily responsible for the construction. It truly is an international achievement. Currently the only country in the world that can launch astronauts to the ISS is Russia. Their Soyuz is a tried, true, and reliable spacecraft. Although the computers and internals of the spacecraft are modern and advanced, the design of the Soyuz has not changed much since 1966, and even that rocket is based off the Vostok which is what launched Yuri Gagarin and Sputnik into space in the late 1950’s. The Soyuz has been launched over seventeen hundred times since 1966, so say what you want about that spacecraft, but it is extremely reliable and safe.
The purpose of the International Space Station is to determine if human beings can survive long duration space flight. If we ever want to leave Earth and travel to planets and places further than the moon we must first learn what long duration space flight will do to human beings physically and mentally. As of right now if we were going to send astronauts to Mars it would take about two hundred and sixty days to get there and around two hundred and sixty days to get back. Thats just travel time, hopefully astronauts will land on Mars and spend some time there. That combined with waiting for a proper launch window to come back to earth we are talking about over two years, maybe more in space. Relying solely on man made life support to live. No possibility of resupply or rescue from earth. Mars is 33.9 million miles away, it would take over three minutes just to communicate with earth. The ISS is a laboratory to learn what space does to the human body as well as a place to test methods of counteracting the negative impacts on the human body.
More than being a platform for humans to begin interplanetary travel, important scientific research is being done on the international space station. On the ISS they’re aiding in the development of effective medicines for debilitating diseases. Proteins are responsible for a wide range of human biological functions including DNA replication. When trying to understand protein replication on earth this is done with crystallography or crystal growth in labs. However on earth the growth is inhibited by gravity. On the ISS, in a microgravity environment crystals grow to much larger sizes, enabling more efficient analysis of their structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer.
I personally feel that the outlook for NASA is good. As a space exploration lover I think that NASA’s budget should be exponentially higher. I think the ISS, SpaceX, Curiosity Rover, Kepler, and Hubble Space Telescopes should all get more attention than a Kardashian. Call me naive if you want but I think the world would be a little better place if people paid more attention to NASA than they do TMZ. At least people might be smarter or inspired by exploration and science instead of gossip. Ultimately I am still excited for what NASA has coming. Conservative estimates have manned missions to Mars in the late 2020’s. Expeditions to explore an asteroid and manned trips around the moon also in the late 2020’s and early 2030’s. Manned launches to the ISS will continue and as early as next year the US will be launching manned rockets again. NASA has plans to send probes deeper and deeper into space than ever before. I really do have a positive outlook for the future of NASA, but they desperately need to learn how to use instagram.
