Humans have always been curious and have tended to conquer beyond their territory. While this has aided our evolution from Homo Habilis to modern Millennials, we should also remember to notice that we have destroyed beyond our limits as well.
With the climate crisis, global health, and population levels in more lamentable conditions than ever before, we are in dire need to call technology for help (or develop tech wherever needed) and search for alternate homes. Or we can clean up the mess we’ve caused over centuries and rebuild our existing home. THIS is the dilemma that mankind is faced with at the moment, and we will be looking at it critically in this article through a series of questions.
Before proceeding further, we need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the term “space commercialization”. So what is this fancy term?
Let’s look at the history. For decades together, everything space exploration has been strictly restricted to government institutions. The missions were mostly aimed at collecting samples or data for research purposes and to get a comprehensive idea of what’s “above” us.
But this decade has brought about change. There are big private players (you know who I’m talking about) coming into the picture with technology better than the present and goals farther than before. And collaboration naturally happens.
This opening up of space exploration to private firms marked the beginning of space commercialization and is the very essence of it.
But why is it a big deal, you ask? After all, now we send rockets from private launch pads and use private engines (like they’re not big deals by themselves).
There’s more to it than we might realize at first thought. The Government agencies in the 20th Century mainly focused on research and discovery in Space. But in the 21st Century, the government agencies and private firms have started working towards a common goal: they aim at making space our second home (thus making space travel affordable), democratizing space tourism, and ultimately establishing colonies in another celestial body (Moon or Mars). Given that space travel has always been prohibitively expensive, this goal now demands us to find cheaper means and here are a few major milestones we crossed on our way.
- Making space vehicle parts reusable. Achieved in 2015 when SpaceX recovered a booster sent to orbit in the Falcon9 rocket. (The second fully privately designed rocket engine to go to orbit) As of 2020, it has been reused for an astonishing 6 times. Not only boosters, but even payload capsules like Dragon were used again, cutting down costs by millions of dollars.
- Making landings more efficient. This one particularly amazes me. To avoid damage during landing, SpaceX built a “spacePORT” drone ship that autonomously controls itself while on station and now, boosters land on this platform. These drone ships’ names are neither scientific nor a puzzling alphanumeric arrangement. Unlike Elon naming his children, he has named drone ships with phrases you’d say to humans. ( Example : Of course I Still Love you, Just Read The Instructions).
- Took astronauts to space (the ISS, specifically) in a fully private vehicle with the certification of NASA. First ever in space history, again. Not to mention, it had already taken a Tesla car to space. So no wonder if we drive on Mars in another 20-30 years.
- Virgin Galactic and Amazon take civilians (billionaires) into orbit. SpaceX follows, by taking an all civilian crew (Inspiration4). Though these initial trips are short-timed, and go only up to the Low Earth Orbit, NASA and other commercial enterprises are planning tourist visits to the ISS, with specialized facilities in orbit. Boy, we’re all REALLY making Mars come closer, aren’t we?
- To give a strong hand, NASA itself has awarded a contract for Human Landing Systems to BlueOrigin, SpaceX, and Dynetics that aims at landing humans on the Moon by 2024 in an initiative allied NextSTEP.
Now that the private space agencies have established their interests in space colonization, what are the things that have to be considered?
- Is there breathable oxygen on that planet?
- We’ll most probably need an artificial gravity system. How do we proceed in designing an omnipresent one?
- Astronauts there are going to be exposed to prolonged periods of radiation, which can cause serious health hazards. What is the most effective form of radiation shield we can make?
- It should ideally be located within the Goldilocks zone, to make optimal use of sunlight.
- Waste recycling/disposal. We CAN’T go about polluting another planet.
- On a longer term, does it support lives other than human life?
- Unlike the ISS, periodic external supply of food won’t be possible to our new habitat. So it needs to support some form of cultivation/agriculture. Or we need to design that as well.
- And obviously, a water source.
After a significant number of private firms came together for this idea, government agencies have also started offering support, and have initiated multiple programs like Moon to Mars and the Artemis.
The first step in implementing outer space habitats needs to start from the moon for feasibility reasons. It’s the closest body, has a gravitational field and we’re fairly familiar with its geography and gaseous composition.
THE ARTEMIS MISSION:
The Artemis-1 mission, which has raised eyebrows at every milestone it has crossed, is the first of a series of missions that is all set to launch this December. It is the first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972 and is aiming to put humans (including the first woman and a woman of colour) on the lunar surface by 2024. But this time, we’re preparing to go to the Moon and “stay” there. Let’s see how so:
Right from its take off, Artemis is burgeoning with advanced tech. The Space Launch System, the rocket that will carry astronauts to the Moon, will be the most powerful rocket ever built and is capable of producing a whopping 4400 tons of thrust. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage is designed to give astronauts the big push they need to go to the Moon, in a step called Trans Lunar Injection. This can propel Orion to traverse a total distance of 2,80,000 miles beyond Earth, which is 40,000 miles beyond the Moon.
AND, NASA has also built a “gateway” that will stay in orbit for more than a decade, and dock with the Orion capsule every time it is carrying astronauts – more or less like a guest house where scientists can stay and undertake research for short periods of time, just in orbit this time. The gateway is to be powered by a 60kW solar electric power plant on board.
There’s more here. The conceptual development of an Artemis Base Camp is underway and is being designed to allow astronauts to stay on the moon for periods as long as two earth months. It comprises of a lunar rover that’ll enable transport, a modern cabin and a mobile “home”. Design ideas on optimization of space suits to bring them as close as possible to normal clothes are also underway.
Now that we know of all the grounds that Artemis is breaking, let me take a few lines out to establish my views on this. Even though a proposed Moon colony has many hypothesized benefits that include enormous mining resources and space for building observatories and telescopes that are deeper into space that Earth, the cost of establishing a functional colony and the demand of astronaut travel it will pose, makes me doubt it’s worth, given the fact that moon is completely devoid of oxygen. We’re also talking about farming at the moon’s poles where a phenomenon called “light of eternity” could be observed (8 hours of sunlight exposure during summers), but we’re also forgetting that the Moon lacks Carbon and Nitrogen as well, which is necessary for pollination.
Well I have always been a pro-Earth person and feel the need to address the problems Earth is facing primarily. But to know what the future awaits us, the wait isn’t long, as all the proposed moon landings are happening within this decade, and we’ll know for ourselves.
LINKS:
REFERENCES :
- https://hbr.org/2021/02/the-commercial-space-age-is-here
- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/around-the-moon-with-nasa-s-first-launch-of-sls-with-orion
- https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
Written by: Aparna Mahadevan
Edited by: Ranganath Viswesh G R
Stellaria 