Friday, November 21 2014
Giant Solar Sails
One of the most important problems to solve for future space travel is fuel for engine that provide thrust. This is a major issues for space travel because, as of right now if we wanted to travel to another planet majority of the weight on the space craft will be fuel. Although, when in the vacuum of space even a lit be of thrust will propel the space craft forever. However, spacecraft have limited space and using fuel for landing on another planet, making adjustments in coarse, and using energy for life support aboard the spacecraft will use amount of fuel. A solution to this problem would be the use of giant solar sails. The main idea behind this that the sun is a giant nuclear engine that is constantly producing solar winds of extremely high energy particles and waves such as, X-rays, gamma rays, extremely fast charged particles that can be theoretically be collected by a giant sail and push the spacecraft forward when the photons and the particles transfer the momentum to the spacecraft. This idea works much like a sail boat that uses a sail to harness the power of wind to move it forward. This idea has several problems attached to it. One of these problems is that for such an idea to work you would need to make a extremely large sail that would impractical to work with. Another problem is that it would become impossible to stop moving because of how large it is.
High Speed Communication
This form of communication will be required for deep space travel as the farther we travel from earth the farther the communication signal has to travel. Not only this but also, sending signals to those space craft will be delayed in the delivery to the people aboard the ship. One possible way to fix this problem is by using laser communication. In this method the message is encoded on a laser beam and is sent at the speed of light to a very precise point to be decoded and read. This method is already widely used in most space satellites and spacecraft for fast and accurate communication. This type of transmission is also comparable to fibre optic cable used on earth. These cable use light to transmit data at the speed of light between computers. This form of communication can send a photo from Mars to Earth in about five minutes instead of the ninety minute wait time of previous forms of communication. This makes high speed communication a must for future deep space travel.
Artificial Gravity
In outer space the force of gravity acting on your body becomes exponentially smaller further from any massive object. However, the force of gravity is still acting upon you but it is extreme small, when this happens we call it micro gravity. Humans were not designed to live in micro gravity and have only recently experienced micro gravity. As a result of this such small gravity has health affects that are still being researched and have only been observed when we have stayed out in space for a long time. For example, some of health effects may include, loss in bone density, muscle loss and weakness, decrease in size of heart, fluid shift, spine problems, inner ear and balance system, and sleep and performance issues. All of these problems can be avoided by having gravity similar to earths on the space craft. This is a problem because we can not create gravity. Gravity is created by giant massive object. One way to solve this problem is by having a circular space craft that is rotating. The space craft would have to be circular and rotating because this would create centrifugal force. This force would push the people inside the space craft outward giving the appearance of weight and gravity. This artificial gravity could be increased or decreased by changing how fast the circular space craft spins in order to best resemble earth gravity. This was most recently seen in the movie "Interstellar." Hopefully, this form of artificial gravity is enough to prevent all of the problems associated with micro gravity and allow humans to have a comfortable journey into the stars.
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