• Question: Do you think in the future people will be going to space more often ?

    Asked by hannah banana to Eimear, James, Jonathan, Lána, Willi on 28 Feb 2018.
    • Photo: Lána Salmon

      Lána Salmon answered on 28 Feb 2018:

      Rockets are becoming reusable and therefore cheaper, with the likes of SpaceX continually working on them. I think as getting to space gets cheaper, methods to get humans into space will follow.

    • Photo: James Geary

      James Geary answered on 28 Feb 2018:

      It is very difficult to say. The cost of transporting humans into space is considerable as the current technology we use, solid and liquid fuel boosters, is not very efficient wrt lift to mass ratio. Although, as Lána correctly points out below there have been efforts to make this more cost effective, without changing the basis technology it is hard to see routine trips to space on holidays as you would go go to Spain for the summer.

      However what would be the need for humans to go into space?
      Currently the main motivation for humans to go into space is to perform experiments, many of these experiments are to understand the impact of space on the human body. Due to the lack of gravity in space there is an impact on bone mass density and muscle loss making us weak. I guess the primary reason to leave Earth would be linked to over consumption of natural resources due to population growth and possibly move to another planet as an alternative?
      This journey would take a long time, the journey to MARS takes approximately 500 days one way and this a long time for a human to be in zero gravity effects. The planet is currently inhabitable so maybe an alternative planet, not yet discovered could be an option? With our current technology a journey outside our solar system would take time so any mission would require sufficient systems to support that mission. A complex spacecraft would be required and for a long journey many humans would travel so that there would be a good probability of some arriving alive? The number of launches required using the existing launch capability of Earth to put enough payload in space to build an intergalactic spacecraft would cost many billions of Euro. It is hard to see where this funding would come from?
      My advise for now based on my knowledge of the space industry is to take care of this planet, we will need it for a long time to come.

    • Photo: William O'Connor

      William O'Connor answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I think there will always be people who want to go into space, and it is slowly becoming cheaper.
      One thing that is fairly easy to do is to go straight up, into space, and come down again, more or less in the same area. In other words, you do no go into orbit (going around and around the Earth) but just visit space and come back. It won’t be cheap, but there are people with lots of money who would pay for this.
      On the other hand, some of the scientific experiments we would like to do can be done by spacecraft without having people on board. Not having astronauts on them makes it much cheaper to design, build and launch satellites. So most things being sent into space do not have people on board.

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